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'. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, I 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 



CORRESPONDENCE 



OF 



GEREIT SMITH 



WITH 



Albert Barnes. 



1868 




FOR SALE BY 

AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, NEW-YORK ; A. WINCH, PHILA- 

DELPHIA ; NEW-ENGLAND NEWS COMPANY, BOSTON ; 

WESTERN NEWS COMPANY, CHICAGO ; AND BY 

J. WEST, PETERBORO, N. Y. 



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^:^<^ 



A LETTER 



FROM 



GEEKIT SMITH TO ALBEET BARNES. 



Peterboro, December 25, 1867. 
Rev. Albert Barnes, Philadelphia : 

My Dear Sir : If I remember rightly, I saw tbe following 
(peril aps in a book) years ago. I now see it in a newspaper, 
whicli ascribes it to your pen. 

"I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more 
sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the 
longer I live. I do not understand these facts, and I make no 
advances toward understanding them. I do not know that I 
have a ray of light on this subject which I had not when the 
subject first flashed across my soul. I have read, to some 
extent, what wise and good men have written. I have looked 
at their theories and explanations. I have endeavored to weigh 
their arguments, for my whole soul pants for light and relief 
on these questions. But I get neither, and, in the distress and 
anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light what- 
ever. I see not one way to disclose to me why sin came into 
the world, why the earth is strewn with the dying and the 
dead, and why men must suffer to all eternity. I have never 
seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given 
a moment's ease to my tortured mind, nor have I an explana- 
tion to offer, or a thougbt to suggest, which, would be of relief 
to you. I trust other men, as they profess to do, understand 
this better than I do, and that they have not the anguish of 
spirit which I have. But I confess, when I look on a world 
of sinners and sufferers; upon death-beds and graveyards; 
upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever; 
when I see my friends, my parents, my family, my people, my 



4 LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

fellow-citizens — when I look upon a whole race all involved in 
this sin and danger ; and when I see the great mass of them 
wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save 
them, and yet He does not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all 
dark, dark to my soul, and I can not disguise it." 

You are a gifted and a good man, a learned and a just one ; 
and yet you are a very unhappy one. " Anguish of spirit " is 
yours. ' Whence comes this ? Confessedly from the violence 
which your theological creed does to your reason, and from 
your not daring to let your reason condemn your creed. Your 
reason sees not reason, but unreason, in that story of the for- 
bidden fruit, which lies at the very basis of your theology. 
Nevertheless, you accept the story and its representation of a 
purely arbitrary and an utterly inexplicable dealing of God 
with man. It must be confessed that your creed corresponds 
with the story — the theological structure with its foundation. 
It must be confessed, too, that the more arbitrary and inexpli- 
cable a Theology of authority, the more suitable — especially so, 
because the more submissive, in that case, the superstitious 
disciples. Indeed, it has been held, that one of the strongest 
arguments for the truth of the Christian theology, and why it 
should be believed, is, that it is not Understandable. 

Instead of doubting the truth or wisdom of any part of your 
creed, jom modestly suppose that, though you can not, others 
can, satisfactorily explain even the most revolting parts of 
it. So entire is your faith in your creed, and so meek is 
your spirit, that all the fault in the case you take to yourself, 
and never suspect that any (however small) share of it, is 
chargeable upon the creed. The creed — although it makes 
God the author of sin ; the builder of an eternal hell ; the 
one able to save men, and yet not saving them ; in short, a 
monster of malignity — you, nevertheless, cling to. Why do 
you? It, surely, is not that you see any thing natural or rea- 
sonable in these horrible features of it, for there is nothing in 
all the realm of nature or reason to commend them to you ; 
nothing in all the laws of evidence to justify you in regarding 
them as other than fancies and fictions. You know, indeed, 
that none of the Theologies, the Mohammedan, Christian, nor 
any other, can abide these laws. And, though you ought to 
know that a Theology should, above all other things, be tested 



LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. D 

by them, you, nevertheless, accept yours upon mere authority 
— the mere authority too, of the ignorant, superstitious, be- 
nighted past. When I say that your Theology can not abide 
the laws of evidence, I do not fail to take into the account that 
the greater the intrinsic improbability of a statement (and how 
utterly improbable are some of the statements and stories in 
your Theology ! ) the more the evidence requisite to sustain the 
statement. But little evidence is necessary to prove that a man 
has died. That his breathless body went straightway into the 
sky could hardly be believed on any amount of evidence. 

And why, too, will you cling to your creed when, notwith- 
standing the excellence of your head and heart, it makes you so 
very unhappy ? The one answer to these questions is, that you 
have allowed authority to force the creed upon you. How 
abhorrent is a religion of authority, as illustrated by your un- 
happiness ! Would that every religion of authority — that every 
such system of superstition and tyranny — were swept from the 
earth ! Relieved of a creed which is so utterly defiant of nature 
and reason, you, with such a head and such a heart as are yours, 
could not fail to have large and happy views of the divine char- 
acter and government. Do you turn upon me with the inquiry 
whether I, who am relieved of it, am favored with such views? 
I answer that I have neither your head nor your heart. 

God is not the author of sin. You do not say directly that 
He is ; and yet you seem to ascribe to sin a divine as well as 
mysterious origin. It is true that man is so made that he can 
sin ; but, instead of complaining of this, we should be thankful 
for it. Instead of lamenting it, we should rejoice in it. How 
low a being would man. be, were he of necessity sinless ! 
How far inferior to what he now is, were he so constituted 
that he could not sin ! He would be a mere machine, and 
his going right would no more argue wisdom and goodness in 
him than does the right-going of a clock argue wisdom and 
goodness in it. The brute, shut up to the direction of its 
instincts, can not err — can not wander from its nature. But 
Infinite Wisdom, instead of predetermining the steps of man, 
has left him to judge for himself. Great, indeed, is the hazard 
of his judging wrongly; but great^ also, is the honor of being 
placed so high in the scale of creation as to be allowed to judge 
for one's self. 



6 LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

Blessed be God that He has made us capable of sinning: or, 
in other words, capable of transgressing the laws which He has 
written npon our being ! It is not His fault if we transgress 
them ; for He has written them so " plain, that he may run that 
readeth" the most essential of them ; and honest and persistent 
study will compass the remainder. It is not His fault if we 
transgress them ; for He has furnished us with abundant mo- 
tives to keep them, and abundant dissuasives from breaking 
them. "Sin is the transgression of the law." This Bible 
definition of sin is the true one; and, therefore, it is not the 
Maker, but the breaker of the law who is the sinner, who is 
the author of sin, and who brings it into the world. By the 
way, this theological doctrine, that sin is a thing or entity, as is 
light or heat, and that God brought it, as well as them, into the 
world, is a great absurdity and a great blasphemy. Sin is 
simply a failure to obey law ; and a failure for which man, and 
man alone, is responsible. I acknowledged the goodness of 
God in making us capable of sinning. I might have added, in 
making us capable of sinning so greatly. For to say that we 
can sin so greatly is, in effect, to say that we have great powers 
and advantages for learning and obeying law ; it being only in 
the abuse of such powers and advantages that great sinning is 
possible. His nature, through the violation of whose laws man 
has become a great sinner, is the very same sublime nature 
Ijhrough the keeping of whose laws he would have been a 
saint. 

We ought not to be amazed at sin — either at frequent sin or 
even at great sin. That the wisest men should fall into sin is 
only because the wisest men may be ignorant of some of the 
laws of their being, physical or moral ; and that the best men 
should fall into it is but that the virtue of the best men is not, 
as yet, proof against all temptations to violate the laws of their 
being. What wonder, then, that they who are neither wise nor 
virtuous should fall into it! Their exaggeration of the guilt or 
criminality of sin is not the least of the wrongs chargeable upon 
the Theologies. It not only tends to inspire the fear that we are 
abhorred instead of loved by God, but it, also, tends to make us 
less amiable and sacred in each other's eyes, and to make us 
coarse and cruel in our treatment of each other. The difference 
between our seeing each other to be small sinners or enormous 



tETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 7 

sinners can not fail of contributing to produce a corresponding 
difference in our conduct toward each other. That " God is 
angry with the wicked every day" was the fancy, not of those 
who knew the Loving Father of us all, but of those who pic- 
tured, in his stead, a revengeful and bloody Pagan deity I The 
stars, which shine sweetly upon all ; the green earth, which, 
with its fruits and flowers, was made for all — these, and the 
impartial sun and rain, unitedly testify that God is Love, and 
that He never hates any one. Nothing can be more absurd 
than this ceaseless preaching that the least sin is, because com- 
mitted against an infinitely great and good God, infinitely 
wicked, and, therefore, deserving of infinite punishment. The 
tendency of this preaching, as already intimated, is to make us 
look upon each other as monsters of wickedness ; whereas we 
should, by considering the ignorance and temptations of men, 
regard their sins with all reasonable charitableness. The Just 
One, who knows our ignorance, and who saw fit, in appoint- 
ing the first stage of our discipline, to put us into this world 
of temptations, pities us for our sufferings in this life ; and, 
although these sufferings are mainly sin-induced, He, neverthe- 
less, can have no heart to add to them punishment in the life to 
come. He has no curses for us. On the contrary, He does all 
that He can (compatibly with our freedom and power to thwart 
and counteract Him) to save us from cursing ourselves and 
cursing one another. Far am I from holding that there is no 
suffering in the next life. If there is sin there, (and I believe 
there is,) suffering is also there — for suffering necessarily attends 
sinning. All I mean to say, at this point, is, that God does not 
add punishment to this suffering ; and that the only punish- 
ment in the case is that which is in this necessarily attendant 
suffering. 

Doubtless, the day is coming when there will be comparative- 
ly little sin on the earth. Science, more than all other agencies, 
hastens the coming of this day. For we may reasonably hope 
that, when science shall have more fully revealed to men the 
laws of their being, obedience to these laws will be in greater 
proportion to the knowledge of them than it now is. Indeed, we 
may reasonably hope that men will not sin forever — that, if not 
in this life, nevertheless in the next, their increasing knowledge 
will conquer their ignorance, and their increasing virtue will 



8 LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

conquer their temptations. So far from falling in with the irra- 
tional and God-dishonoring doctrine, that the sinner will have 
no opportunities in the next life for reformation and improve- 
ment, we should allow reason and nature to inspire the ex- 
pectation, that such opportunities will be far greater there than 
here. 

That our views and treatment of one another are greatly 
modified by our conceptions of the Deity should not be doubted. 
Every people resembles its God. The justification of the Jew" 
for hating the Gentiles was that his God hated them. The ex- 
cessive punishments inflicted by the Jews did but harmonize 
with their conceptions of God. His cruelty was the warrant 
for theirs. "We ought not to wonder that they put the man to 
death who "gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day ;" nor that 
they punished with death disobedience to parents. These enor- 
mities grew largely out of their belief in that vindictive, bloody, 
monstrous God, who, unhappily, became the God of the Christian 
nations also. But it may be asked why, if these nations adopted 
the God of the Jews, do they not inflict as unreasonable and 
merciless punishments as the Jews did. The answer is — that 
their God has been changing, for a very long time. A civiliza- 
tion, increasingly science-shaped by the progress of science, has, 
for centuries, been encroaching upon the superstition, intole- 
rance, and cruelty of the Christian Church, and softening the 
repulsive features of her God. Such pictures of the Deity, as 
her pulpits were wont to draw, no longer ago than the begin- 
cning of the present century, they would hardly be allowed to 
,draw now. There lies before me a sermon preached, less than 
forty years ago, by Rev. Dr. Alvan Hyde, of Massachusetts, to 
justify the doctrine of the eternal damnation of infants. A 
Massachusetts audience would not tolerate such a sermon now. 
The Church will, ere long, have to let these grotesque and ab- 
horrent Theologies go down-stream, if science and common 
•sense but continue their present successful war upon them. 

God has made no hell. All the hells are made by men. God 
puts no one into them. Men put themselves and one another 
into them. God's part is to keep them out and pull them out, 
so far as they will let Him. All His laws are to this end ; and 
were all men obedient to them, not only would no one be in 
hell, but there would be no hell. I said that not only nature 



LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 9 

and reason, but, also, all the laws of evidence are against your 
horrible creed. What, for instance, is the evidence that there 
is an eternal hell ? It is, chiefly, one word said to have been 
spoken by Jesus. But how far it is from certain, that he spoke 
it, and, especially, that he spoke it, intending it to have the 
meaning given to it in our translation, and by our ecclesiastical 
standards ! Although, we have satisfactory evidence that he 
spoke substantially as the New Testament says he did, we have 
no right to believe that his speeches were, word for word, as 
recorded in that book. Again, Jesus did not claim to know all 
the future. There is no proof of the existence of any but man- 
made hells. And, although there are many persons who still 
believe in a God-made hell, (some of them, however, only be- 
cause they have enemies whom they wish to put into it,) it is, 
nevertheless, gratifying to know that the intelligent man is now 
very rare to whom such a hell is an object of delightful con- 
templation. Where, now, could be found a person of suflS- 
ciently satanic spirit to exclaim, as did Tertullian, one of the 
most eminent of the Church Fathers: "How shall I admire, 
how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many 
proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss 
of darkness ; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name 
of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled 
against the Christians ; so many sage philosophers, blushing in 
red-hot flames with, their deluded scholars !" 

" God only can save them, and yet He does not do it^ This is 
another of your great mistakes. Grod tries to save all men 
from sinning. But He has not the ability to save any man 
without the help of that man. Had He intended to retain such 
ability. He would not have "created man in His own image," 
and invested him with free agency, and the power to choose 
his character and destiny. When God made man so great, as 
to "will and to do" for himself, He made him too great to be 
saved by the direct and unaided power of even God himself 
Men must work with God in accomplishing this salvation, or 
it can not be accomplished. Hence, instead of your sorrowing 
over God's not saving men, it would be less unreasonable in you to 
sorrow that He made man so great ; so much like Himself; and, 
in some vital respects, so far beyond even the Divine control. 

That ^^the earth is strewn with the dead^^ is, also, mysterious 



10 LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

to you. But it sliould not be. For several reasons we should 
be glad that men die, when their bodies are worn out with old 
age. Amongst these reasons are — 1st. This life has, then, 
become more of a burden than an enjoyment. 2d. We trust 
that, at its termination, a higher life awaits us. 3d. Our death 
makes room for others to live — for an endless succession ol 
generations to have experience of earthly existence. In the 
distant future, when men shall live wisely here, earth-life will 
be far more precious than it now is. Had the life of man ex- 
tended to thousands of years, the inhabitants of the earth would 
have been but a handful compared with the aggregate souls 
of those unending generations. And in that case, there would 
have been not only comparatively few to know this life, but, 
consequently, comparatively few to be translated from it to the 
nobler life. 

But, perhaps, your lamentation is over premature deaths only. 
They, certainly, should not be charged upon God. They come 
not from His hand. When men shall have learned, as they yet 
will learn, the laws of life and health ; and shall, as they yet 
will, faithfully keep them, there will not only be few or none 
of these premature deaths, but the ordinary length of this ex- 
istence will, probably, be at least double its present three-score 
and ten years. We should be very careful not to charge upon 
the Great and Good Father the evils, which come from the un- 
necessary ignorance and wilful sins of His children. 

This creed, which makes you so unhappy — would that you 
could throw it away, and thereby encourage thousands to throw 
away their similar creed ! But, I fear, that you still confound 
your Theology with your Eeligion — or, that you, at least, regard 
this greatest of all hinderances to your Eeligion as a help to it. 
I fear that your eyes have never yet been opened to see that the 
heaviest of all Earth's curses is the confounding of Religion, 
here with one, and there with another, of the Theologies. I 
fear that you still suffer yourself to call the Bible all true — 
though, in doing so, you, none the less because unconscious of 
it, insult God and make yourself the enemy of man It is, in- 
deed, the best of books — a repository of the sublimest inspira- 
tions, principles, and precepts. Nevertheless, it abounds in 
foolish, false, and exceedingly pernicious things. Its silly, and 
some of them very revolting, stories about the Red Sea, the 



LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 11 

Sun and Moon, tlie Whale and Jonah, Lot's wife turning into 
salt, the control of the skies by Elijah's prayers, God's sending 
" lying spirits " into His children, etc., etc., have ever continued 
to feed to fatness the superstition of Christendom. The Bible's 
wicked curse upon Caanan has been the prevailing plea with so- 
called Christians for carrying fire and sword into Africa, and 
robbing her of tens of millions of her children. Its causeless 
and cruel wars, charged on God Himself, justify every war and 
every murder. Its one short line : " Thou shalt not suffer a witch 
to live," has cost the hanging and burning of many thousands 
of innocent women and not a few innocent men for the fanciful 
crime of witchcraft Its making woman guilty of the first sin, 
and its charging chiefly upon that sin her pains in child-bearing, 
have gone far to justify man in stamping her with inferiority 
and in playing the tyrant over her. Its representing God to be 
the hater of men, and of some even before they were born, must 
go far toward making it impossible for those who believe in 
such a God, to have just minds and loving hearts. In its own 
words, " And what shall I say more ? — for the time would fail 
me to tell of" all the foolish and abominable things in this book, 
which ecclesiastical authority commands us to gulp down entire, 
or, "without picking and culling," as one of my good old minis- 
ters required. I said the Bible was the best of books. It is 
such, when it is allowed to be read in freedom and with dis- 
crimination. But it is, perhaps, not too much to say that it is 
the worst of books, when read under authority, and with no 
liberty to call any of its words in question. 

This belief that every word of the Bible is true — how much 
evil it has wrought! From this delusive belief has come the 
running to it to learn when the world will end. But for this 
superstitious use of the Bible, who, in Christendom, would have 
thought of the world's ever ending! " Millerism," however, 
and its frequent kindred predecessors in the past centuries, 
much as they have done, by their reliance on alleged Bible pre- 
dictions, to agitate, unsettle, and afflict mankind, are but a faint 
illustration of the evil that has come from believing every word 
in the Bible to be true. 

The longer I live, the more am I persuaded that wealth is 
what the world most needs for its redemption from ignorance, 
wickedness, and unhappiness. Enough of it is created by the 



J2 LEITER TO ALBEKT BARNES. 

toiling poor, and, in point of fact, they are nearly all who do 
create it. Alas, that the misuse of much of it should be such, as 
to make the toiling poor poorer ! War, intemperance, excessive 
luxury, and giddy, reckless fashion are great wasters of wealth ; 
but no one of them wastes more than do the Theologies, direct- 
ly and indirectly. For instance, if the Christian Theology had 
not so successfully passed itself off for the Christian Keligion, 
these evils, which I have just now enumerated, would, so far 
as Christendom is concerned, have been far less extensive, and 
their waste of wealth correspondingly less. Then, look at the 
hundreds of millions, which it costs Christendom annually to 
build and support the churches and other establishments, which 
this Theology calls for ! For, remember, that this expenditure 
is not to meet the demands of the simple Christ-Eeligion, but 
the demands of the various modifications and various sectarian 
shades of this mj^stic and miracle-stuffed Theology. It is the 
rivalry of the Theological sects, which calls for this vast expen- 
diture. Plain halls would sufl&ce for the assemblies of those, 
who seek to grow in this simple religion ; and plain, loving- 
hearted men and women would be acceptable preachers in them, 
though the highest order of talent and culture should also be 
heard in them. Simple, as sweet, is the religion taught by the 
blessed Jesus — the one religion of nature and reason — the reli- 
gion of doing as we would be done by — the babe-religion, (for 
He declares that even " babes " can understand it,) the religion, 
in short, which, according to Him, none need aid to understand, 
for He said to the people, to the promiscuous multitudes : " Yea, 
and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Had 
Jesus believed that a Theology — a metaphysical system — was 
necessary to the elucidation of his religion, he would, at least, 
have said so ; and, probably, would have furnished it. His 
simple religion, summed up in the obvious duty of loving our 
brother, and his, and our, common Father, it can hardly be said 
that He thought it necessary to explain. It is true that He 
often illustrated it, but it was by the simplest objects in nature, 
and in other ways scarcely less simple. Oh ! how sad it is, that 
you and other wise and learned and good men should still per- 
sist in leading the people to look amongst metaphysics and 
mysteries for a religion so intelligible, as to be understood, the 
moment it is seen ; and to look for it, too, amidst historical and 



LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 13 

traditional uncertainties, when it is to be found, and found only, 
in the certainties of their consciousness ! History and tradition 
suffice to inform us in matters where mistakes are not vital. 
But better is it to build our house upon the sand than to build 
our religion upon a foundation so uncertain as history and tra- 
dition. ^Nevertheless, upon this utterly untrustworthy founda- 
tion do nearly all men, in all lands, build their religion. 

In this connection let me say how infinitely absurd is the 
doctrine, that a religion so simple and so obviously true as is 
the Christ-Eeligion, needs to be proved by miracles. The Theo- 
logies are not worth proving ; and, therefore, no miracles are 
called for in their case. 

After what I have said, it is hardly necessary to add, that 
men do not need to go to church to learn the Theologies, since 
the Theologies are far worse than merely worthless. Nor hardly 
necessary is it to add, that they need not go there to learn the 
Christ-Eeligion. Almost as superfluous is it to go there to learn 
this exceedingly simple Eeligion of nature, as it would be to go 
to school to learn how to breathe and swallow. The Christian 
preacher need spend very little time in teaching his hearers this 
Religion. They, already, know it. His work is to persuade 
them to love and practise it. 

I spoke of the plain halls in which will be the future preach- 
ing of the plain Gospel. And how suitable, too, will they be 
for lecturers on natural science — for the geologist and astrono- 
mer I These lecturers will be immeasurably useful in clearing 
away the rubbish which ignorance has put in the way of reli- 
gion. They will open books, and read from books, which can 
not deceive, and which go farther than all things else to save 
religion from sinking into superstition, sectarianism, and bigotry. 

Yery painful to me, and doubtless to you also, is the sight of 
so much of God's good earth, and so much of human industry, 
put to the production of tobacco and the materials for intoxicat- 
ing drinks. But more painful it is to me, and I would it were 
also to you, to see wise and learned and good men at work to 
uphold these cracking and tottering structures of ignorance and 
superstition, which they should be at work, day and night, to 
demolish. It is even more desirable to see good heads and good 
hearts than good soils put to good uses. 

The churches wonder at the rapid increase of what they 



14- LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

call " infidelity," but what is chiefly the casting off of the 
Theologies. They should not wonder at it. It is entirely 
unreasonable to expect that our science-enlightened age shall 
hold to the Theologies, constructed in an age of darkness — an 
age, when it was believed that the earth was a plane of only a 
few hundred miles in circumference, and, yet, of such para- 
mount importance, that the sun, mpon, and stars were made but 
to serve it — and an age, too, when it was believed that God's 
dealings with His children, instead of being directed by 
unvarying laws, were but the irregular and fitful impulses, 
now of His love and now of His hatred, now of His revenge 
and now of His repentance. How is it possible that Europe 
and America, having learned that the earth is but a speck in an 
illimitable universe, and that the unvarying laws, which govern 
both, leave no room for a passionate and changeful God, and 
no room for the working of miracles — how is it possible, I say, 
that they can much longer continue to have patience with these 
puerile Theologies ? Europe and America will continue to go 
back to Asia for their Jesus Christ, since there has been but 
one Jesus Christ. But, they will cease to go back to her ignor- 
ance and superstition for materials out of which to construct 
their Theologies. 

On the whole, my dear sir, I am glad, not only that you con- 
fess the extreme unhappiness, which this absurd creed of 
the '' orthodox " gives you, but, (and I say it with all tender- 
ness of heart toward your sufferings,) I am glad you are made 
so unhappy by this God- dishonoring and man-shriveling creed. 
That you are made so unhappy by it, will induce very many 
to forsake it, and will hold back still more from embracing it 
Great as are your sufferings from your creed, even you will not 
regret them, if you shall come to see how many of your fellow- 
men have been enlightened and warned by them. 

With warm desires that these fancies, which so afflict you, 
may soon leave you, and that these fictions, which you have so 
unhappily allowed to usurp the place of truths, may soon be 
Been by you to be but fictions, 

I remain, with great regard, your friend, 

Gerrit Smith, 



Sin and Suffering in the Universe. 



LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE HON. GERRIT SMITH, OF PETER- 
BORO, N. Y., BY ALBERT BARNES. 



PEEFATOEY NOTICE. 

The following letters were written during the last winter, 
in reply to one, in pamphlet form, addressed to me by the 
Hon. Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, New- York. Circumstances, 
not now necessary to be referred to, have prevented their 
being published until the present time. The title of Mr. 
Smith's letter was, A. Letter from Gerrit Smith to Albert 
Barnes. 1868. It is not at all as a personal matter, with 
which the public could have no interest, or with any view to 
set myself right before the public, that these letters in reply to 
the one addressed to me by Mr. Smith are printed, but solely 
because the subject is of great importance to the world. It was 
for this reason, and this only, it may be presumed, that Mr, 
Smith had his letter to me printed, and that it was sent to me 
in that form only. For this reason, also, and no other, my re- 
ply to him is printed in the form which I think wijl be most 
"useful. It is not improper, I trust, as it is not designed to be 
disrespectful, for me to say that it seemed to me that Mr. 
Smith's letter was not fitted to do as much harm, as a proper 
answer might do good. Hence these letters in reply to his. 

In order that there might be no suspicion of unfairness 
in the reply, I have copied, without change or omission, the 
parts of his letter referring to the points under consideration,. 
and have thus, in fact, reproduced his entire argument, and 
almost the whole of his pamphlet. Albert Barnes. 

. Philadelphia, June 20, 1868. .. i, 



16 Sllf AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 



LETTER I. 

Hon. Gerrit Smith: 

My Dear Sir : When, nearly forty-eight years ago, I be- 
came a student of Hamilton College, your name was more fre- 
quently referred to than that of any one wlio had graduated at 
that Institution. You had preceded me by two or three years. 
You had received the highest honor in your class, and your 
high social position, your warm and generous nature, and your 
acknowledged talents and scholarship, led to a universal expec- 
tation of a high career of honor and usefulness. 

It has so happened, I believe, that although we were born in 
the same vicinity ; though we graduated at the same college ; 
though we have both been with some prominence before the 
public; and though we have taken a warm interest in the great 
questions which have been before the nation, and which have 
so deeply and permanently affected our national affairs, we have 
never met, nor do I remember to have seen you but once. In 
common, however, with thousands of others, I have rejoiced in 
your wide and noble philanthropy; in your ardent love of 
liberty ; in your friendship for the oppressed and the wronged ; 
in your opposition to the worst law that was ever enacted in a 
land of freedom — the "Fugitive Slave" law; and in all that 
you have done for suffering humanity, and for the happiness 
of men. 

Now, as we are approaching the termination of our long 
course, j^ou have been pleased to address me, in a printed pam- 
phlet, on a subject which can not be denied to be the most im- 
portant that can occupy the attention of man at any period of life, 
and which is eminently appropriate to those who are approach- 
ing, as we are, the invisible world. It can not be improper, espe- 
cially as you have invited me to the task, to inquire whether 
the views which you have expressed in your letter to me, and 
which must be regarded as your mature opinions on the subject 
of religion, will be in the line of the benevolence of your long 
life, and will tend to promote the happiness of the world when 
we shall have passed away. 

It is not improper for me to say that we have both arrived at 



SIJ^ AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 17 

a period of life, wben, so for as we are personally concerned, an 
unspeakable importance must be attached to the utterance of 
our opinions. In earlier life, we could hope to be able to recall 
and repair what we might find on maturer reflection to be erro- 
neous or injurious. We can entertain no such hope now. For 
good or for evil, what we utter goes forth to the world, and es- 
caping from our lips or our pen, it is beyond our reach forever. 
I do not say that this fact gives us any claim to the attention 
of our fellow-men, or that any special importance should be at- 
tached to our sentiments on that account ; but no man approach- 
ing very near the eternal world can fail to desire that his last 
utterances should be in accordance with truth, and should be 
such as will promote the happiness of the world when he has 
gone to his grave. It is with this view, with the highest de- 
gree of respect for yourself personally, that I shall examine 
with freedom the letter which you have been pleased to address 
to me. 

The passage on which your letter to me is founded, referring 
to the existing foots in this world in regard to sin and misery, 
and to the punishment of the wicked in the future world, is the 
following : 



" I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more sensibly and power- 
fully the more I look at them, and the longer I live. I do not understand 
these facts, and I make no advances toward understanding them. I do not 
know that I have a ray of light on this subject which I had not when the 
subject first flashed across my soul. I have read, to some extent, what wise 
and good men have written. I have looked at their theories and explanations. 
I have endeavored to weigh their arguments, for my whole soul pants for 
light and relief on these questions. But I get neither, and, in the distress and 
anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not 
one ray of light to disclose to me why sin came into the world, why the earth 
is strewn with the dying and the dead, and why men must sufler to all eternity. 
I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a 
moment's ease to my tortured mind, nor have I an explanation to ofler, or a 
thought to suggest, which would be of relief to you. I trust other men, as 
they profess to do, understand this better than I do, and tha"t they have not 
the anguish of spirit which I have. But I confess, when I look on a world of 
sinners and sufferers ; upon death-beds and grave-yards ; upon the world of 
woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever ; when I see my friends, my parents, 
my family, my people, my fellow-citizens — when I look upon a whole race all 
involved in this sin and danger ; and when I see the great mass of them 
wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them and yet 
2 



18 SIN AND SUFFEKING IN THE UNIVEESE. 

He does not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all dark, dark to my soul, and I 
can not disguise it." 

This was written, if I remember right, more than twenty 
years ago. I have no doubt that it is correctly quoted. It ex- 
pressed my feelings then ; it expresses my feelings now. Time 
has done nothing to modify my vie^vs, nor have I as yet seen 
any explanation which has removed the difficulties to which I 
then referred. 

Whether the explanations which you have offered will con- 
tribute to their removal, will be the main object of my inquiry 
now. I should welcome more cheerful views if they could be 
presented. I should hail with joy any explanation which would 
be a relief from these difficulties. I should then find what the 
wise and the good of all ages have hitherto longed for and 
sought in vain. 

To a correct appreciation of the value of the solution which 
you have offered, it will be necessary to consider the following 
points : 

I. The difficulties as they lay in my own mind ; 
II. The explanation which you have offered ; 

III. The system of religion on which your explanation is 
founded; and 

IV. The question whether that system has greater advantages 
than my own,, or is better fitted to confer happiness. If it is 
thus fitted to confer happiness, and to calm down the mind in 
reference to these difficulties, it would not be unreasonable in 
you to ask that I should abandon the system which I have so 
long held, and embrace yours. 

Your first remark in reference to the passage on which your 
letter is founded is as follows : 

" You are a gifted and a good man, a learned and a just one ; and yet you are 
a very unhappy one. ' Anguisli of ^pirit' is yours. Whence comes this ? Con- 
fessedly from the violence which your theological creed does to your reason, 
and from your not daring to let your reason condemn your creed. Your rea- 
son sees not reason, but unreason, in that story of the forbidden fruit, which 
lies at the very basis of your theology. Nevertheless, you accept the story 
and its representation of a purely arbitrary and an utterly inexplicable deal- 
ing of God with man. It must be confessed that your creed corresponds with 
the story — the theological structure with its foundation." 



SIX AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 19 

Now, it is proper forme to ask, by loliom is this " confessecV^f 
It seems to be implied that /" confessed " or avowed this. Yet 
this is ill no manner true. I neither confessed nor avowed this 
in the extract which you have made ; nor have I done it any- 
where else ; nor do I now do it ; nor do I now admit it to be 
true in any sense whatever. I had reference solely to facts ; 
not to any theor}- in regard to those facts. My dif&culty con- 
sisted not at all in reconciling these things to anj^ sj'stem of 
philosophy or theology which I hold, but to the fact that we 
are under a divine administration — to the character of a holj^, 
a just, an almighty, and a benevolent Creator. The matter 
referred to lay in my mind in the following form : 

(1.) The facts could not be called in question. 

(2.) Those facts had no necessary connection with any theory 
of philosophy or religion. 

(3.) I had seen no sufficient or satisfactory explanation of 
those facts. 

(1.) The facts, I supposed, could not be called in question. 

I still suppose this to be true. The facts referred to are, 
that this is a world of sinners and sufferers — of death-beds and 
grave-yards ; that there is danger that large numbers will suf- 
fer forever ; that the whole race is involved in this sin and dan- 
ger; that the great majority of men are unconcerned in regard 
to this danger ; that God only can save them, and yet that He 
does not interpose by His power to do it. 

It certainly will not be denied by you that a part of these 
things at least is true— that part which relates to the existence 
of sin and suffering now on the earth; which have existed for 
thousands of years ; and vvhich have existed in all lands and 
under all forms of government, and in connection with all sj's- 
tems of philosophy and religion. You yourself do not refer to 
any lands, or to any period of history, in which there has been 
exemption from these things, nor could you do it. As I be- 
lieve in God, it seems plain to me that this is somehow connected 
with His administration ; as you believe in God, you must ad- 
mit this also. My difficulty as to this fact was to understand 
why the Creator liad suffered this to occur under His adminis- 
tration. The difficulty nmy be expressed in a word. If it 
might be supposed for a moment that you and I had been con^ 



20 SIN AND • SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

suited as to what kind of a world a Being of infinite power and 
perfect benevolence would make, I think we should have said, 
without hesitation, that He would not have made sucli a world as 
this is in this respect. I only add here, that if you will furnish 
any satisfactory explanation of this fact — of the reason why sin 
and misery have been allowed to come into the universe at all, 
and to exist for six thousand years, and how this is to be recon- 
ciled with the power, the justice, and the benevolence of God, 
I think it would not be difficult to advance with the same mode 
of reasoning which would explain this, and to show that it 
would not be inconsistent with the same power, justice, and 
goodness, that it should be allowed to exist, under the same ad- 
ministration, in some form, forever. 

The other part of my difficulty related to the fact that suffer- 
ing and sin will exist in the future world. 

The main difficulty here is not peculiarly mine, but it presses 
on you as really as it does on me. This is apparent, I think, 
from the following considerations : (a.) On your theory, man, as 
■man^ is liable to sin, and, as such, must be liable to it in the 
future world as well as in this. Indeed, in your apprehension, 
this constitutes the true, the real dignity of his nature ; and if 
this exalted dignity of his nature is manifested in this world, it 
would be difficult to show any reason why it should not also be- 
done in the world to come, and if at all in the world to come, 
at any 'period in the world to come — that is, forever. Thus you 
say (p. 5) : 

" It is true that man is so made that he can sin ; but, instead of complaining 
of this, we should be thankful for it. Instead of lamenting it, we should re- 
joice in it. How low a being would man be, were he of necessity sinless ! 
How far inferior to what he now is, were he so constituted that he could not 
sin ! He would be a mere machine, and his going right would no more argue 
wisdom and goodness in him than does the right going of a clock argue 
wisdom and goodness in it." 

And again you say (p. 6) : 

" Blessed be God that He has made us capable of sinning ; or, in other words, 
capable of transgressing the laws which He has written upon our being ! . . . I 
acknowledged the goodness of God in making us capable of sinning. I might 
have added, in making us capable of sinning so greatly. For to say that we 
can fcin so greatly is, in effect, to say that we have great powers and advan- 
iiges for learning and obeying law ; it being only in the ab^se of such pow- 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 21 

ers and advantagfes that g^reat sinning is possible. His nature, through the 
violation of whose laws man has become a great sinner, is the very same sub- 
lime nature through the keeping of whose laws he would have been a saint." 

From this I infer tliat it is the real exaltation of man that he 
can sin, and consequently that he does sin ; for to act out his 
nature is his proper exaltation, and it is this which, distinguishes 
him from the brute. You have shown no reason why this ex- 
altation of his nature should not manifest itself in a future 
world as well as in this, and forever. 

ib.) It is, if I understand you, a part of your theory that God 
saves all in this world that He can — implying that there are 
some whom He can not save ; that is, who will be lost, (p. 9.) 
If this is so in the present life, it may follow that such as are not 
saved in the present life will not be in the life to come, for 
it is fairly implied in your language that the power of Grod in 
this respect is exhausted in the present life, or, so to speak, that 
God would have no better chance of success in the life to come ; 
and that if He can not save such incorrigible sinners here, no hope 
can be entertained of His being able to do it there. If, as you 
say, " God has made man too great to be saved by the direct and 
unaided power of God Himself" here, is it not probable that, 
with expanded faculties in the future world, man will be found 
" too great " to be saved by that power there ? 

(c.) According to your theory, (p. 14,) as I shall more fully 
quote hereafter, the universe is governed by unvarying and es- 
tablished laws, not permitting any direct intervention of the 
divine power. The fixedness of those laws must extend ove'r 
all worlds, and embrace all time, and must, therefore, com- 
prehend the regions beyond the grave as well as the affairs of 
this world. The principle implies, too, that this is eternal. It 
must, therefore, operate as a limitation of the divine power in 
the future world as well as in this. 

{d.) You expressly admit that there maybe sin and suffering 
in the future world ; that is, that men may be lost : a number 
made up, according to the statement just referred to, of those 
whom God can not save. Thus you say : 

" Far am I from holding that there is no suffering in the next life. If 
there is sin there, (and I believe there is,) suffering is also there — for suffeiing 
necessarily attends sinning." 



22 SIN- AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

What will be the extent of this sin and suffering in the future 
world, you do not, indeed, state, but if the evidence in the case 
is to be derived from the fewness of those who appear to be 
converted in this life, and to be prepared for heaven, the num- 
ber can not be small. So far, however, as the principle is in- 
volved, it can make no difference whether it is small or great. 
The essential point of difficulty is, that any should be lost in 
the future world. 

(g.) There is one other remark to be made here : one other 
point on which we can not differ, for there is not any ground for 
a difference of opinion in regard to it. It is, that there is a very 
general fear or apprehension of future punishment among men, 
and that that punishment, unless something can be done to avert 
it, will be unending. This is somehow laid permanently in the 
human mind. I need not remind you that this universal fear — 
this " dread of something after death," as expressed by Hamlet, 
exists everywhere. It is found in the consciences of all men. 
It is laid at the foundation of all the heathen religions of the 
world. It enters into the Mohammedan system. It constitutes 
the foundation of the faith of more than nine tenths of the Chris- 
tian world. It may be doubted whether a single human mind 
exists that would be exempt from it on the commission of a 
great crime. ISTow, this occurs under the government of God, 
and in the human mind as He has made it. The difficulty is, if 
there 25, as you say, no " Hell," to understand why He has so 
made man that he everywhere dreads the future under the belief 
that there is a " Hell." If there is, as I believe there is, such ? 
world of woe, I can easily understand why man has been so made 
as to dread it, that is, to act as if this were true. But what if 
there is no such world of woe ; if there is nothing, in fact, to be 
dreaded when the sinner dies? Assuredly this must be known 
to God, and yet, knowing this, He has filled the world with 
fear and alarm — on your theory, with false and needless alarm, 
and, therefore, deceptive alarm. 

Are we, then, to believe that God governs the world with 
false alarms; with unreal fears; with unfounded apprehen- 
sions? Are we to believe that the divine administration is 
founded on a stupendous falsehood? Are we to believe that 
God controls men, as weak and foolish parents do their children, 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 23 

by bugbears; by delusions; by frightful stories of bears and 
wolves; of ghosts and hobgoblins? I confess, for one, that I 
could not, and would not, honor such a God. And yet, so far as I 
can see, such must be the character of God unless there is real 
punishment to be feared in the future world. I think it is in- 
cumbent on you to explain this fact on the theory which you 
hold. 

Such are some of ihe, facts on which my difficulty was found- 
ed. 

(2.) My next remark is, that these facts have no necessary 
connection with my theory of religion ; with my creed or any 
other creed ; with my theology or any other theology. 

You have been pleased to say, as already remarked, that these 
difficulties pertain to my theory of religion — to my system of 
theology. But if the facts are as I have now stated them, they 
have no particular and exclusive reference to any one theory 
of religion or theology. They pertain to one system as really 
as to another; to yours as much as to mine ; to you as much as 
to me. The real difficulty is not in the Calvinistic system, or in 
the Arminian system; in the Trinitarian theology, or the Socin- 
ian theology; in the system of him who believes in the doctrine 
of future punishment, or the system of the Universalist ; in the 
belief of the Christian, or the want of belief in the Infidel ; in 
the Buddhist system of religion, or the system of the Brahmin ; 
in the religion of Confucius, or the religion of Zoroaster ; in the 
Koran, the Zendavesta, the Shaster, the Bible, or the Book of 
Mormon ; in the Mythology of the Greeks and Eomans, or 
in the system of the Hottentot or the Fejee Islander ; in the 
philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Des Cartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, 
Locke — of Kant, Ilobbes, Hume, Cousin, or Comte. The diffi- 
culty is in the facts themselves ; in reconciling these facts to the 
ideas of justice, goodness, and mercy with which we find our 
nature endowed. The real difficulty is to understand how an 
almighty, a pure, a holy, and a benevolent God — the Creator 
of the world — should allow these things to come into His sys- 
tem; bow they should be suffered to continue from age to age; 
how they should be permitted to spread desolation, woe, and 
sorrow over our world in all its history ; how they should ex- 
tend into the future world at all ; how there should be either 



24 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

a cerlainty or a possibility that tliey should continue forever. I 
need not say to you that this has been eminently the great pro- 
blem to be solved in all ages, and how the problem has entered 
into every system of theology and philosophy. For one, I felt 
the greatness of the difficulty, only as millions have done before 
me, and I gave utterance to my own feelings in the strong lan- 
guage which you have quoted, as human nature has done in all 
ages. 

In my next letter, I shall consider the various explanations 
•which have been made of these facts, with reference to the in- 
quiry whether they are adapted to calm down the anxieties of 
a troubled mind. In the third letter, I shall examine the pecu- 
liar explanation which you have offered. I am, with great re- 
spect, truly yours, Albert Barnes. 



LETTER 11. 

Hon. Gerrit Smith: 

My Bear Sir: In my former letter, in reference to the 
extract which you bad quoted from me, as expressive of my 
difficulties respecting the existence of sin and suffering in the 
universe, I made two remarks : (1.) That the facts can not be 
called in question ; and (2.) That these facts have no necessary 
connection with any theory of philosophy or religion. 

I proceed now to say, (3.) That no sufficient or satisfactory 
solution of these facts had been presented to my mind. 

(a.) It did not seem to me to be a sufficient explanation to 
refer these things to Chance, I believe in a God. Besides, 
there are too many marks of plan, of system, of design, in the 
arrangement, to make that explanation allowable. Moreover, 
there is a remedial system existing, which is not easily traceable 
to chance. The arrangements, for example, for healing dis- 
eases — lying at the foundation of the whole science of medicine, 
as well as the plan of redemption, seem to me to be any thing 
rather than the production of chance. 

(5 ) In like manner, it did not seem to me to be a proper and 
satisfactory explanation of these things to refer them to Fate, 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 25 

As in regard to the former solution, so it is in regard to this. I 
believe in a God, and the idea of a God is as incompatible with the 
idea of Fate^ as it is with the idea of Chance. Besides, there are 
evidences of human freedom or liberty in the world, which are 
not reconcilable with the notion of Fate ; for nothing is plainer 
than that the state of things on earth is everywhere connected 
with voluntary human agency. 

(c.) I could not find an explanation of these difficulties in the 
supposition that God could not prevent sin and suffering, or that 
He could not create an order of free agents so that they would 
not sin. I see no reason to doubt that He has done so in the 
case of unfallen angels, and I would hope and believe that He 
has done so in regard to the inhabitants of far distant worlds. 
I can not believe that angelic beings are kept from sin by phy- 
sical force, or that they are not properly free ; nor can I doubt that 
the redeemed in heaven will be forever secure from all danger 
of apostasy, and that their security from sin will be in entire 
consistency with their freedom. I know not why the same 
thing might not occur on earth. At any rate, it can not be 
denied or doubted, that God, when He made man, must have 
foreseen all that would occur, and must have known that 2/ He 
created him, he would fall and would bring this woe, and ruin, 
and danger, into the world. But it must be admitted that there 
was no necessity laid on God to create at all, and, therefore, no 
necessity for the introduction of sin and misery into the world. 
Yet, under these circumstances, God chose to create man with 
the certainty that he would fall into sin ; that He chose to permit 
the introduction and prevalence of sin and woe on the earth, 
rather than not create at all. 

{d.) The idea that God resolved to introduce sin and misery 
as a mere act of will and sovereignty — by an arbitrary decree 
— ordaining His own creatures to sorrow and death simply to 
show His power, and because He chose that it should be so, did 
not seem to me to be an admissible explanation. I am so made 
that I could not embrace such a view of God. I see nothing in 
the Bible to demand such a solution. I could not reconcile 
this with my ideas of God. I could see no explanation of 
the difficulty if this were so. I could see, I thought, that the 
real difficulty could be augmented by such a supposition, for 



26 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVEESE. 

such a God could be neither adored, honored, worshiped, nor 
loved. 

(e.) The theory that sin is the necessary means of the great- 
est good — a theory adopted by many — did not seem to me to 
remove the difficulty, nor to be true in itself. What good, if 
any, could come out of the permission of evil which could 
not have been secured in another manner, has never been 
shown. But if it be alleged that there have been displays of 
the divine character, as the result of sin, which could not other- 
wise have been made, still it is not easy to see how it was con- 
sistent with benevolence, or with any proper view of that cha- 
racter, to permit or to introduce the crimes and woes of this 
world and of the world to come, in order that that character 
should be displayed. It would be difficult, and I think impos- 
sible, to show that it would be proper for a sovereign to allow 
designedly the existence of murder, treason, and rebellion, with 
all the woes consequent on them, to spring up under his 
reign when he could easily have prevented them, in order that 
his own character might be displayed either in pardon or in 
punishment; still more difficult might it be to see how it 
would be proper for a father to allow his own child to fall 
into habits of vice or to experience suffering, in order the bet- 
ter to display his own character, either of clemency or of justice. 
It is easy, indeed, to understand how, when sin, treason, murder, 
or rebellion have been committed, the character of a just and 
benevolent sovereign may be exhibited by the infliction of pun- 
ishment or by an act of pardon ; or how, when a fault has been 
committed by a child, the character of a parent may be dis- 
played in a manner in which it could not have been, if no such 
fault had been committed; but the difficulty is to see how all 
this could have been permitted or introduced when it might 
have been easily prevented, or how arrangements could have 
been made for it as a part of a plan, in order that the character 
might thus be displayed. 

(/) I could not find an explanation of the difficulty in the 
supposition that this has been suffered to come into the system, 
because God prefers sin to holiness, evil to good, misery to 
happiness. I think that all men are so made that they can not 
believe this. At least, I am so made, and there is evidence 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 27 

that tliis has been the general judgment of mankind. It is 
clear, moreover, that whatever might be the fact in such a case, 
even if it should be true that God does prefer sin to holiness, man 
would not have been made with this conviction on bis mind, 
and true also, that the world would not have been made as it 
has been — for there are innumerable proofs in the facts that 
are constantly occurring that God hates ^in ; that He seeks to 
check and restrain it ; and that He intends to punish it, and 
not to bestow His favor on those who persevere in committing 
it. This theory, therefore, I think, no one could adopt. I am 
not aware that any class of men, however much perplexed they 
may have been on the subject, or however wicked they may 
have been, have in fact adopted it. 

(g.) The theory that moral evil is inevitable from free agency, 
as friction is unavoidable in a machine, and that it is better to 
create a world of free agents, even with this inevitable result, 
than not to create a world at all — as it is better to make a 
watch, a locomotive, a steam-engine, or a wagon, with this in- 
evitable result, than not to make them at all, seems to me to be 
as little satisfactory in explaining the difficulty. I was aware, 
as you doubtless are, that this theory has been held, and that it 
has been most ingeniously defended by one, at least, of the 
master minds of this country. Yet it is difficult, after all, to see 
how the divine power is necessarily limited in this manner. 
For there have been minds created, in great numbers, with 
great powers, and with perfect freedom, where this result did 
not follow, as the unfallen angels of light, and, as I believe, the 
inhabitants of far distant worlds are ; and it is not easy to see 
why this might not have occurred in our world as well as else- 
where, or why, if this end could be attained, so to speak, without 
friction in other worlds, it might not have been secured in our 
own. Besides, if a watch or a locomotive can not be made 
without friction, it does not follow that God could not make a 
mind that would not go wrong, and that without any violation 
of the principles of liberty. 

{h.) In like manner, it did not appear to me that it furnished 
a solution of the difficulty, to refer it, as you have done, to the 
free-will of man. I shall have occasion to allude to this again, 
when I come to examine the solution which you propose, and 



28 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

which you ask me to adopt. I need not say to you that this is 
neither a new nor a modern solution of the difficulty. It is found 
in all the old theological writings of a certain school, and enters 
largely into systems of modern philosophy and theology, and is 
probably that which is entertained by the mass of men, so far 
as they have any opinion on the subject. I need not remind 
you of the beautiful form in which it has been expressed by 
Milton : 

" Tliey therefore as to riglit belonged, 
So were created, nor can justly accuse 
Tlieir Maker, or their making, or their fate, 
As if predestination overruled 
Their will, disposed by absolute decree 
Or high foreknowledge ; they themselves decreed 
Their own revolt, not I : if I foreknew. 
Foreknowledge had no influence on tlieir fault, 
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. 
So without least impulse or shadow of fate, 
Or aught by me immutably foreseen. 
They trespass, authors to themselves in all 
Both what they j udge and what they choose ; for so 
I formed them free, and free they must remain. 
Till they inthrall themselves ; I else must change 
Their nature, and revoke the high decree. 
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained 
Their freedom ; they themselves ordained their fall." 

Paradise Lost, Book III. 

It is sufficient now for my purpose to remark in regard to this 
solution, that it can not be shown to be a necessary violation of 
freedom to exert such an influence as to keep beings thus en- 
dowed from sin, since there are numberless such beings who are 
thus preserved, and since such beings are entirely conscious 
of liberty, and the more so, the more holy they are. More- 
over, unless we admit this principle, it is impossible to see how 
those who shall be saved can have any security of permanent 
happiness or holiness in heaven. If to restrain them there, so 
as to make it certain that they will not fall into sin, is neces- 
sarily a violation of freedom, it is impossible to conceive how 
there can be any security of holiness or happiness there, or how 
God can promise it to men. Besides, if the certainty that one 
will not sin is a violation of freedom, it is impossible to con- 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN TUE UNIVERSE. 29 

ceive that God Himself can be free ; for it must enter into all 
our conceptions of the divine character that He is unchangeably 
holy. Why may not creatures in this respect, as in other re- 
spects, be made in the " image of God " ? 

{i.) A solution of the difficulty is not to be found in the 
ancient Persian system of religion, subsequently assuming the 
form of Manicheism : in the idea that there are two original 
and independent principles — good and evil — in the universe 
struggling with each other. This system was, as you know, 
at one time embraced by Augustine to relieve the difficulties in 
regard to the introduction of evil into the world, which pressed 
on his mind — the difficulties to which I have already referred, 
and which lie felt, perhaps, as keenly as any man that has ever 
lived. I will confess to you that this system has more plausi- 
bility to my mind than most of those to which I have referred, 
and I have often looked at it in my perplexities, with anxious 
inquiry whether there might not be in it an element of truth 
which would relieve the subject from embarrassment; and even 
now, if I were compelled to abandon the Bible and its teach- 
ings, I should be more likely to embrace this than any form 
of infidel philosophy to which my attention has been directed. 
I would embrace this system rather than that of Spinoza. I 
would sooner be a Manichean than a Pantheist ; I would sooner 
follow Zoroaster than Comte. 

(j.) It remains to say that I have not been able to find a 
solution of my difficulties in the doctrine of Universal Salvation. 
I could not embrace that system, with my views of the proper 
rules of interpreting language, without giving up the Bible alto- 
gether. The Bible does not teach the doctrine of the salvation of 
all men. It can never be made to teach that doctrine by a 
proper interpretation of language. If the Bible teaches any 
thing clearly ; if words have any meaning ; if there are any 
proper rules of interpreting language, the Bible teaches the doc- 
trine of the eternal punishment of the wicked, and it can not be 
made to teach otherwise. You have referred to my creed, as if 
I held some peculiar views on the subject. But I have no 
peculiar creed. I hold just what the mass of men bave held ; 
what ninety-nine men out of every hundred have held ; what all 
men — Christians and infidels — except the small class who call 



30 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

themselves Universalists, have held, that the Bible teaches that 
the wicked will be punished forever in the future world. I take 
the liberty of saying that the doctrine of the future eternal 
punishment of the wicked is not expressed in stronger or 
plainer language in the creed to which I have expressed my as- 
sent, or in any creed held hy any Christian churchy Catholic, Greek, 
or Protestant — in the Heidelberg Catechism, in the Thirty-nine 
Articles of the Church of England, in the Westminster Confes- 
sion, or in any particular creed of any Congregational church, 
than it is in the Bible. Nay, in almost all these creeds, the 
doctrine is stated in the very words of the Bible ; and if you 
could convince me that the doctrine is not taught in the Bible, 
you would at the same time, and by the very same process of 
reasoning, convince me that it is not taught in any creed in 
Christendom, and that it is, in fact, held by no class of mankind. 
If I were, therefore, to reject the doctrine of the future punish- 
ment of the wicked, I should not be a Universalist trying to 
hold on to the Bible. I would become at once an honest infidel, 
and would reject the Bible altogether. The infidel is the only 
consistent man. I think, in the view which I take of the fair 
interpretation of the Bible, that I see the reason why there are so 
few avowed Universalists as compared with the actual number 
of infidels in our country, and why it is so difficult to keep up 
the system of Universalism as an organization. The number of 
persons in any community who can be made to believe that the 
Bible inculcates the doctrine of universal salvation must always 
be small ; the number of those who, for various causes, reject the 
Bible altogether, may be and probably will be much larger. Of 
the two I would be one of the latter, and so the mass of mencZo 
judge, and always will judge. Whether I should obtain any 
relief in this respect, in such a course, or by adopting the views 
which you counsel me to embrace, may perhaps be seen in what 
I have yet to say. 

Such were, and are, the difficulties in my mind on this great 
subject. 

In my next letter, I shall consider the explanation which you 
have ofiered in regard to these difficulties. I am, with great 
respect, truly yours, Albert Barnes. 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 31 



LETTER III. 

Hon. Gerrit Smith: 

My Dear Sir : In my last letter to you, I noticed the vari- 
ous explanations which have been suggested of the existence 
of sin and misery in the universe, with reference to the question 
whether those explanations are adapted to calm down the anxi- 
eties of a troubled mind. In this letter, I propose to enter on 
an examination of your solution of those facts. 

Respecting your theory of explanation, it is proper to inquire, 
first^ What it is ? and second^ Whether the explanation removes 
the difficulty ? 

First. Your explanation of the difficulty, embracing also 
your views of the manner in which the evils are to be remov- 
ed, is comprised in the following specifications : 

1. That man is so made of necessity that he can sin, and 
could not have been made otherwise if he was a free agent, and 
that the whole evil is therefore to be traced to the freedom of 
man ; or, in other words, that the existence of sin follows inevi- 
tably from the notion of free agency, and that this is a matter 
for thankfulness and of rejoicing. (Pp. 6, 7.) 

2. That God saves all that He can. (P. 9.) 

3. That death is an advantage, or that the arrangement is to 
be regarded as one of benevolence. (P. 11.) 

4. That the representation that sin is a great evil, deserving 
of infinite punishment, tends to make men hate one another, or 
to judge men contrary to what God does. (P. 7.) 

5. That science is doing something to mitigate the evil, and 
that it may be hoped that it will do more. (P. 7.) 

6. That the grand remedy for the evils of the world is wealth, 
(p. 11 ;) and 

7. That it may be hoped and expected that man will be in a 
more fworable condition in the future woild, or that though 
the wicked may suffer there, yet that there will be a more de- 
sirable system of probation, so that all evil may there come to 
an end. (Pp. 7, 8.) 

I propose now to make some general remarks on this solu- 
tion, and then to examine these points in detail. 



32 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

In general, then, I remark that your theory does not deny 
the existence of the main facts which constitute the difficulty, 
and which I said did so much to perplex my own mind, and 
which made the subject to me, as it has to thousands of others, 
so dark — the present so dark — the future so dark. You can 
not, and you do not attempt to deny, the existence of evil. 
You do not deny — you could not do it — that this is a world of 
sinners and sufferers — of death-beds and grave-yards. You 
do not deny — you could not do it — that the race is involved in 
sin and danger ; you do not deny that men may suffer in the 
future world. All these things are either admitted in express 
terms in your letter, or are implied in your theory of explana- 
tion. These are the main, the essential facts which have given 
me so much perplexity. 

In like manner, you do not deny — you could not deny — that 
these things occur under a divine administration ; that they 
constitute a part of a plan ; that they actually take place under 
the government of the world under which we live, and by 
which we and our friends, and all our fellow-creatures, are, and 
must be, deeply affected. You do not deny — and you can not 
deny — that they seem to conflict with the essential elements of a 
just and benevolent divine administration, and with the cha- 
racter of an almighty, a just, and a merciful Grod; for you at- 
tempt to explain them, and to show how they are consistent 
with such a character ; or, in other words, you aim to show 
liow they, in fact, constitute the best system — a better system 
than one would be if these things had not been permitted to 
occur. In regard to the material /acfe, then, I think we do not 
differ. I do not see how we could differ, unless one of us 
should deny the existence of what is constantly occurring 
before our own eyes. Do you doubt that there are evils, 
crimes, woes, sorrows, in this world ? Do you doubt that a 
system of slavery fraught with tremendous evils has been al- 
lowed to exist in our own country? Do you doubt that a war 
most fearful and bloody has been allowed to occur as the con- 
sequence of the existence of slavery ? Do you doubt that this 
has somehow been permitted to take place under the adminis- 
tration of an almighty, a just, and a benevolent God? And do 
you doubt that the world is now filled with error, superstition, 



SIN" AXD SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 33 

and crime, and is strewed with sick-beds and graves ; that the 
earth itself is "a vast revolving grave," and has been for 
many thousands of years ? 

Now, I had these, /ac^5 before my mind, and not any theory 
in regard to them. The facts themselves gave me trouble, not 
any theory on the subject. I saw no way in which to relieve 
my mind from perplexity. You have proposed to me a way 
of explanation and relief I shall now proceed to examine that 
with some minuteness of detail. 

(1.) The first point which you rely upon is that man is so 
made necessarily that he can sin, and that the origin of evil is 
to be traced wholly to the freedom of man, or to the freedom 
of the will ; or, in other words, that sin is inseparable from the 
notion of free agency^ and that this constitutes the true noble- 
ness of man, and is a matter for thankfulness and rejoicing. 

I have referred to the passage in which you affirm this be- 
fore, but it is so remarkable, and enters so vitally into your 
theory of explanation, that I will copy it again. 

The statement is in the following words : 

" It is true tliat man is so made that lie can sin ; but, instead of complaining 
of this, we should be thankful for it. Instead of lamenting it, we should 
rejoice in it. How low a being would man be, were he of necessity sinless ! 
How far inferior to what he now is, were he so constituted that he could not 
sin ! He would be a mere machine, and his going right would no more argue 
wisdom and goodness in him than does the right going of a clock argue wis- 
dom and goodness in it. The brute, shut up to the direction of its instincts, 
can not err — can not wander from its nature. But Infinite Wisdom, instead 
of predetermining the steps of man, has left him to judge for himself. Great, 
indeed, is the hazard of his judging wrongly ; but great, also, is the honor of 
being placed so high in the scale of creation as to be allowed to judge for 
one's self. 

" Blessed be God that He has made us capable of sinning ; or, in other 
words, capable of transgressing the laws which He has written upon our 
being ! It is not His fault if we transgress them ; for He has written them so 
plain, that ' He may run that readeth ' the most essential of them ; and honest 
and persistent study will compass the remainder. 

" I acknowledged the goodness of God in making us capable of sinning. I 
njight have added; in making us capable of sinning so greatly. For to say 
that we can sin so greatly is, in effect, to say that we have great powers and 
advantages for learning and obeying law ; it being only in the abuse of such 
powers and advantages that great sinning is possible." (Pp. 6, 7.) 

I have already remarked on this passage, so far as it relates 
3 



84 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE, 

to the question whether it is possible for God to make a free 
agent, and jet secure his perfect and continued holiness, con- 
sistently with the idea that the agent would still be free, or con- 
sistently with the idea of liberty. I have nothing more to add 
on that point than to observe that we do not connect the idea 
of stern and unbending virtue — virtue so unbending and so stern 
that we feel assured that it will not do wrong — with the idea of 
slavery, or with the violation of personal liberty. An honest 
man ; a man thoroughly and always honest — honest without 
wavering through the longest life — is not less free than a dis- 
honest man; a sincere and incorruptible patriot is not less a 
freeman than a traitor. The community never suspected that 
your being an upright and a benevolent man was any proof 
that you were not free ; nor, in the highest conception in which, 
those qualities have been justly ascribed to you, was there any 
idea that you did not, and do not, exercise perfect liberty. If 
there was in your case such a foundation of virtue and benevo- 
lence as to constitute a ground of moral certainty — as I doubt 
not there was — that this would characterize you through the 
whole of a long life, no one would suppose that this would be 
incompatible with the highest consciousness of personal liberty 
in your own mind. From any thing that appear.^. General 
Washington was as really a freeman as Benedict Arnold, nor 
was that incorruptible patriotism and integrity which was so 
great in the one that his country confided in it always, any 
more a proof of slavery than was the love of gold in the other- 
Nay, it has been commonly held that vice and sin constitute 
servitude, and that virtue is true freedom. There was more of 
truth than of poetry in the remark of Cowper : " He is a free- 
man whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves besides." 
And it is not merely the authority of inspiration that makes 
the declaration of the Saviour true : "Whosoever committeth 
sin is the servant — dovXog — of sin," (John 8 : 34;) or of the 
declaration of Paul: " Know ye not, that to whom ye yield 
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye 'are to whom ye 
obey ?" (Eomans 6:16.) Can it be doubted that the Eedeemer 
of the world was invested with perfect freedom, and yet that it 
was certain that He would never sin ? Can it be doubted that 
God is free, and yet that it is " impossible that He should lie " ? 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 35 

(Heb. 6 : 18.) What would be the security of the universe, if the 
doctrine implied in your statement were correct, that immunity 
from sin, or the certainty that one will not sin, is incompatible 
with freedom ; that one can not he so pure and virtuous that he 
could never do wrong, and yet be free ? Is not all our security of 
every kind founded on the idea that the Creator and Governor of 
the universe is immutably holy ; that we have the utmost assur- 
ance that He will never do wrong? Might not, then, a crea- 
ture be so entirely created in the image of God that there 
would be a certainty that he would never sin, and yet be free? 
If he could not be so made, will you solve this problem : Why 
he should he made at all ? 

I have, therefore, said that this explanation does not meet 
my difficulties on the subject. But there is a more important 
aspect still, in which your solution of the difficulty is to be 
noticed. It is, that the fact that man is so made that he can 
sin, and that, under the circumstances of the case, he would 
sin, is, in your apprehension, a matter of thankfulness and 
rejoicing ; that this, in fact, constitutes the true nobleness of his 
nature. "Blessed be God that He has made us capable of 
sinning; or, in other words, capable of transgressing the laws 
which He has written upon our being." "I acknowledged the 
goodness of God in making us capable of sinning. I might 
have added, in making us capable of sinning so greatly. For 
to say that we can sin so greatly is, in effect, to say that we have 
great powers and advantages for learning and obeying law." 
That is to say, the real greatness, the dignity, the true noble- 
ness of man, is manifested in the fact that he is capable of com- 
mitting enormous crimes; his real greatness and nobleness 
would not and could not have been manifested if he had been so 
made that it would have been certain that he would never sin. 
In other words, the real greatness and nobleness of man is to 
be measured by the greatness of his sin ; or by the fact that he 
does sin " so greatlyy He could not have manifested his true 
greatness if he had not shown it in this manner, or if he had 
been so made, or if such an influence had been exerted on him, 
that it would have been certain that he would not Imve sinned ; 
that is, if he had been made, as it is commonly supposed the re- 
deemed will be in heaven, secure in their holiness ; or as the, 



36 SI^ AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

holy angels are ; or as the Saviour was ; or if He himself had 
been made, in this respect, perfectly in the " image of God." 

According to this view, therefore, the measure of the great- 
ness and nobleness of Adam was not his capacity to worship 
God, or his disposition to do so, but his capacity to apostatize, 
and to " bring death into the world and all our woe," and this 
measure of greatness is to be found in the extent of death and 
the amount of woe that he has brought upon the earth. The 
nobleness of Cain was not in his capability to worship God, and 
could not have been in any certainty that he would do this, 
but in his capability to murder his brother ; the nobleness and 
greatness of Noah was not that he was a " preacher of righteous- 
ness," standing as an unshaken monument of piety in a wicked 
world, but in his capability to be made drunk after he had been 
saved from the deluge ; the nobleness of Lot was not that he 
set an example of piety to the guilty inhabitants of the cities 
of the Plain, and that " his righteous soul was vexed with the 
filthy conversation of the wicked," but that he was capable of 
being intoxicated and of committing incest ; the nobleness of 
David was not in his valor in war, in his sweet poetrj^, in the 
wisdom of his administration, in his humble piety, but in his 
ability to violate the sixth and the seventh commandments of 
the Decalogue ; the nobleness of Judas was not in any power 
to love and serve his master as John did, but in his power to 
betray him ; the nobleness of Benedict Arnold was not in any 
power which he had to serve his country as Washington did, 
but in the fact that he could act under the influence of British 
gold, and attempt to ruin the cause of liberty ; the nobleness 
received from his Maker by Jefferson Davis was not in the fact 
that he might have exerted his talents for the good of his coun- 
tr}^, and in the cause of liberty, but that he was capable of 
plotting tbe ruin of both, and of putting himself at the head 
of the most formidable rebellion that ever occurred in any age — 
a man who would have fastened the chains of slavery on the 
limbs of millions of his fellow-men forever. 

For such " greatness " — for these high endowments — you 
say : " Blessed be God that He has made us capable of trans- 
gressing the laws which He has written upon our being." " I 
acknowledged the goodness of God in making us capable of sin- 



SIN AND SUIFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 37 

ning. I miglit have added, in making us capable of sinning so 
GREATLY." Verily, the world owes a debt of gratitude to the 
great and benevolent Creator wbich has not yet been rendered 
to Ilim. 

(2.) Your second principle in explaining tlie flicts to which I 
referred is, that God saves all that He can, and tliat, conse- 
quently, the fact that men are lost, if they are lost, is because 
God can not save them. This idea you express in the following 
language (p. 9) : 

" God tries to save all men from sinning. But He has not tlie ability to 
save any man without the help of that man. Had He intended to retain such 
ability, He would not have ' created man in His own image,' and invested him 
with free agency, and the power to choose his character and destiny. When 
God made a man so great as * to will and to do ' for himself. He made him 
too great to be saved by the direct and unaided power of even God Himself. 
Men must work with God in accomplishing this salvation, or it can not be 
accomplished." 

This is evidently a limitation of the power of God, and accord- 
ing to this, we are under an administration in which, whatever 
benevolent feelings there may be on the part of our Maker, 
there is no power or ability to carry them out, or to execute 
them. But, the omniscience of God is not yet denied, and the 
problem to be solved is: How would it be consistent with be- 
nevolence, to bring creatures in great number into existence 
when He who made them knew at the time that they would 
fall into ruin, and that He, whatever might be His benevolent 
feelings, could not help it? It is a problem of difficult solution 
how such a God could be honored, or how He could deserve to 
be adored. 

It is to be remembered, too, that, according to your theory on 
the point to which I have just referred, God could not interpose 
in the case without violating their freedom, and that the very 
greatness and nobleness of their nature consists in the fact that 
they were so made that God could not prevent it if they chose 
to sin. 

It is natural to ask here, how far this view would tend to 
promote the "happiness" of mankind, or to prevent the feeling 
of gloom and sadness which you think spring out of the system 
which I hold? The idea which you entertain, if I understand 



88 SIN AND SUFFEEING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

it, is, that God ivonld save these sinners if He could, but that 
He has so made them of design that He could not help them if 
they fell into this condition ; that they could of themselves 
easily reach a point where they would be bej^ond His power for 
good, and where they could bring the direst evils on them- 
selves, in this world and the next, in spite of all that their 
Creator could do to prevent it ; for if their necessary freedom 
involved this in the present life, the same necessary freedom 
would involve it in the life to come. Nay, the same idea 
would involve the want of all security even in heaven ; for if it 
enters essentially into the idea of freedom^ it would apply to 
heaven as well as to earth or hell. How one could find happi- 
ness in this idea, it is difficult to conceive. The idea is, God 
has made me ; He knew when He made me not only that I was 
liable to fall into a hopeless condition, where not even He Him- 
self could save me, and that I would actually fall into this con- 
dition, and yet, notwithstanding this. He launched me upon 
this dark and tempestuous sea ; He lost His power to save me 
the moment I chose to sin, and He has no means of regaining 
that power over me ; and, although He may have a benevolent 
heart. He has no means whatever of accomplishing His benevo- 
lent desire. How far would such a view tend to promote the 
happiness of the world, or to calm down the troubled feelings 
of the human soul in its present condition ? 

For one, I should not wish to live in such a world — a world 
in which, when God " made man so great as to will and to do 
for himself. He at the same time made him too great to be 
saved by the direct and unaided power of even God Himself" 

But how, let me ask, is it known that there are sinners so 
great that God can not save them? How do you know that 
He tries to save all that He can ? How can it be known that to 
save a great sinner necessarily violates His freedom ? Are 
there any greater sinners now on the earth than many of those 
were who have been saved ? Are there now those whom it would 
be more difficult to save than was Saul of Tarsus, or Augus- 
tine, or John Bunyan, or John Newton ? And was there any 
violation of i\\Q freedom of those men in what God did to turn 
them from the errors of their ways? Certainly those men 
never felt that *' God had not the ability to save any man with- 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 39 

out the help of the man." Certainly, Saul of Tarsus never 
supposed that he " had been made too great to be saved by the 
direct and unaided power of God Himself." Certainly, if we 
way judge from their own recorded views of themselves, or 
from the freedom, the voluntariness, the zeal, with which those 
men engaged in the service of God after their conversion, they 
never supposed that there had been any violation of liberty in 
the power which had been put forth by God to turn them to 
Himself. "Why should that power stop just where it has done, 
and not embrace other great sinners also ? 

(8.) Your third solution is, that death is an advantage — a 
thing not to be regretted or mourned over, but to be rejoiced 
in as an arrangement of benevolence. 

This idea you have expressed in the following language : 

" For several reasons we should be glad that men die when their bodies 
are worn out with old age. Among these reasons are : 1st. This life has 
then become more of a burden than an enjoyment. 2d. We trust that, at its 
termination, a higher life awaits us. 3d. Our death makes room for others 
to live, for an endless succession of generations to have experience of earthly 
existence. In the distant future, when men shall live wisely here, earth life 
will be far more precious than it now is. Had the life of man extended to 
thousands of years, the inhabitants of the earth would have been but a hand- 
ful compared with the aggregate souls of those unending generations. And 
in that case, there would have been not only comparatively few to know this 
life, but, consequently, comparatively few to be translated from it to the nobler 
life. 

" But, perhaps, your lamentation is over premature deaths only. They, 
certainly, should not be charged upon God. They come not from His hand. 
When men shall have learned, as they yet will learn, the laws of life and 
health, and shall, as they yet will, faithfully keep them, there will not only 
be few or none of these premature deaths, but the ordinary length of this ex- 
istence will probably be at least double its present threescore and ten years. 
We should be very careful not to charge upon the great and good Father the 
evils which come from the unnecessary ignorance and willful sins of His 
children." 

It can not be denied, I think, that a removal from earth — a 
removal from one world to another — may be desirable ; that it 
may be a part of the bliss of the redeemed hereafter to pass 
from world to world; and that in the eternity before them 
they may have an abode in all these worlds which God has 
made, in order that they may learn in each one the peculiar 
manifestation of his glory there. The universe — so vast, so 



40 SIN AND SUFFEEING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

grand — seems thus to have been made to give occupation to 
immortal minds, as it can not be doubted that in each world 
there is some peculiar manifestation of the glory of an infinite 
God. But the question now is, Why should this passage from 
earth to another world — from one world to another — be accom- 
panied with pain, dread, and sorrow — the fearful pain, the 
dread, and the sorrow of death ? Why is this necessary ? 
Why is it adopted? What exact good comes out of it? 
Why might not men pass from this world to another as we 
may suppose the angels pass from heaven to earth, with- 
out pain, or as Enoch and Elijah passed from earth to hea- 
ven, " without seeing death " ? Assuredly it is conceivable 
that God might have made men so ; assuredly it would have 
seemed probable that He luould have made tiiem so. How 
much would it render a passage from world to world in the 
future state, if it is to occur, a subject of c?rea(i and not of joyful 
anticipation, to be told that each and every such removal must 
be attended with the pain of dying, and that all those worlds 
must be constantly and forever filled with dread and sorrow 
and pain, with sick-beds and graves ! I think, therefore, that 
there must be some other reason for death than the mere neces- 
sity that the inhabitants of earth should pass away to make 
room for others — -lest there should be but '' few comparatively 
to be translated from earth to the nobler life." 

It is to be remarked, also, that the question is not whether 
this life may not be, in fact, so much more " a burden than 
an enjoyment;" whether it may not be desirable to be re- 
moved from the infirmities of old age when " these bodies are 
worn out ;" whether death may not even be desirable as a relief 
from intolerable suffering ; but why the race is 'placed in such 
circumstances that death ever could he desirable ; why these in- 
firmities, pains, and sorrows have come npon the race ; why, 
under the administration of a wise and benevolent God, the 
world is made full of sufferers, so that it would be desirable for 
them to die ? This, and not the point which you have propos- 
ed, is the difiicult one to be solved. Why are things allowed 
to exist under God's government which would ever make death, 
with all its forms of pain and horror and dread, desirable ? 

Suffer me to ask a few questions here : 



SIX AND SUFFERING IN" THE UNIVERSE. 41 

Grant that it may be benevolence that human beings should 
be removed to other worlds ; why is it done in this manner ? 

Grant that it may be desirable that the sick, the infirm, the 
broken-down, should be removed, or that men may be actually 
in such a state as to make death desirable ; why should they 
he in that state at all ? 

Grant that this might be proper for hardened offenders ; why 
should the righteous and the good leave the world in the man- 
ner in which they actually do — under slow torture, torn by 
wild beasts, burned at the stake, or under loathsome and pro- 
tracted forms of disease ? 

Grant that it may be proper for adults thus to die; why 
should children who have not yet " done good or evil " leave 
the world under all forms of suffering ? 

Grant that the arrangement is a good one in this world; 
would it not be as good in any other world — in heaven — and 
why may it not then exist forever ? 

Your explanation of the difiS.culty in regard to death does 
not, therefore, seem to me to meet the case. Whatever it may 
do for you, it does not relieve the perplexities of my mind. 

I have thus examined at some length a portion of your 
methods of solving the difficulty in regard to the existence of 
sin and suffering in this world and the world to come. 

I shall complete the examination in my next letter. 

I am, with great respect, truly yours, 

Albert Barnes. 



LETTER lY. 
Hon. Gerrit Smith: 

My Dear Sir : In my last letter I entered on an examina- 
tion of your solution of the difficulties involved in the exist- 
ance of sin and suffering in the universe. I shall complete the 
examination in this letter : 

(4 ) Your fourth remark in explanation of the difficulties, or 
in attempting to remove them, is, that the representation that 
man is a great sinner, and is deserving of infinite punishment, 
tends to make men hate one another, and to judge men con- 
trary to what God does. (P. 7.) 



42 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

This idea you have expressed in the following language : 

" It not only tends to inspire the fear that we are abhorred instead of loved 
by God, but it also tends to make us less amiable and sacred in each other's 
eyes, and to make us coarse and cruel in our treatment of each other. The 
difference between our seeing each other to be small sinners or enormous sin- 
ners can not fail of contributing to produce a corresponding difference in our 
conduct toward each other. That ' God is angry with the wicked every day,' 
was the fancy, not of those who knew the Loving Father of us all, but of those 
who pictured, in His stead, a revengeful and bloody pagan deity ! The stars, 
which shine sweetly upon all ; the green earth, which, with its fruits and 
flowers, was made for all — these, and the impartial sun and rain, unitedly 
testify that God is love, and that He never hates any one. Nothing can be 
more absurd than this ceaseless preaching that the least sin is, because com- 
mitted against an infinitely great and good God, infinitely wicked, and there- 
fore deserving of infinite punishment. The tendency of this preaching, as 
already intimated, is to make us look upon each other as monsters of wicked- 
ness ; whereas we should, by considering the ignorance and temptations of 
men, regard their sins with all reasonable charitableness. The Just One, who 
knows our ignorance, and who saw fit, in appointing the first stage of our 
discipline, to put us into this world of temptation, pities us for our sufferings 
in this life ; and although these sufferings are mainly sin-induced. He, never- 
theless, can have no heart to add to them punishment in the life to come. 
He has no curses for us. On the contrary, He does all that He cian (compatibly 
with our freedom and power to thwart and counteract Him) to save us from 
cursing ourselves and cursing one another." 

I have myself never maintained or affirmed that sin is an infi- 
nite evil, and that it therefore deserves infinite punishment, and I 
have never seen any force in the argument when it has been so 
presented. I do not find that sin is ever spoken of in the Bi- 
ble as an " infinite " evil, or that the doctrine of future punish- 
ment is ever represented in the Bible as founded on that idea. 
That it has been so represented by a certain class of theologians 
I do not deny ; but you could not hold me responsible for that 
view, as you seem to do, from any thing that I have ever said or 
written. I confess to you that the phrase, " sin is an infinite evil^'' 
conveys no idea whatever to my mind. Any argument, therefore, 
based on that idea, in favor of the doctrine of the eternal punish- 
ment of the wicked, makes not the slightest impression on me. I 
acknowledge that /could not demonstrate the justice of eternal 
punishment from any view which /could take of the evil of sin ; 
just as there are very many things occurring, in fact, under 
the divine administration on earth of which I can not under- 
stand the cause, or which I can not vindicate by any process 



SIX AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 43 

of reasoning of my own, or any view whicli I could take of 
them, and in relation to wbich, I should have said leforehand^ 
that such things would not have occurred under the govern- 
ment of God. I could not, for example, by any reasoning of 
my own, vindicate the sufferings which come upon infants ; nor, 
in thousands of similar cases, could I show how the sufferings 
which are experienced in this life are exactly measured by the 
guilt of the sufferer. * The whole subject is quite too high for 
me, and I have never attempted to reason on the one case or the 
other. I am content to take the one as 2i, fact actually occur- 
ring under the government of Grod, and the other as the un- 
doubted affirmation of the Bible, and to leave the whole mat- 
ter of the reasons in the one case and the other with God ; the 
one being no more difficult to my mind than the other. In fact, 
the one is as inexplicable to me as the other, and, for aught 
that I know, the reasons which would explain the one would 
make the other plain also. Until I understand why sin and 
woe came into the universe at all, I am content to leave the luhole 
matter of their continuance ivith God. 

But as to the immediate point — the question whether this view 
of the depravity and danger of man tends to make us " hate our 
fellow-men." Few men have ever had a deeper conviction of 
the depravity of the human race than the Apostle Paul. Did 
that lead him to " hate" mankind ? What man has ever 
shown a warmer love for the race than he, or has been willing 
to make more sacrifices in behalf of sinners ? The Saviour of 
the world had a deep conviction of the depravity and danger 
of men, and yet where has there been such love? The heart 
of a parent, who has any right feeling, is deeply affected by the 
conduct of a son or a daughter if they go astray — not with ha- 
tred, but with the warm affection of love, and with a willing- 
ness to make sacrifices for their welfare. Did the father of the 
Prodigal Son " hate'' his erring and guilty son ? And who are 
the men or the women who are willing to make the most sacri- 
fices, or to practice the most self-denial, for the good of oth- 
ers? Are they not those who are most deeply impressed 
with the sins of the world, and with the danger of those who 
are sunk in the depths of idolatry, superstition, and crime? 
Was it true that David Brainerd was a hater of mankind, or 



44 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

that he had no love — no compassion — for men ? Did he subject 
himself to the sacrifices and self-denials of a life among wretched 
savages, because he thought they were good and safe f 
Had Henry Martjn no love for men ; no kind feelings toward 
them ; no sympathy for them ? Had Schwartz ? Had Yan- 
derkempt? Have they who go now among the heathen as 
missionaries of the cross none? And do those who take a dif- 
ferent view of human nature, and who regard the race as vir- 
tuous, and as safe from danger, show any special love for man- 
kind, or evince any special willingness to make sacrifices for 
the good of the world ? Do skeptics and infidels evince any 
such zeal? Do they practice any special self-denial for the 
good of others? Did the British deists in the seventeenth cen- 
tury do this; did the actors in the French Eevolution do it? 
Have Unitarians shown any special willingness to make sacri- 
fices for the heathen? Have Universalists any missions involv- 
ing self-denial ? 

But, after all, the question is not one respecting our feelings 
toward others, but it is whether the race is in fact sinful, and 
whether sinners are m /ac^^ in danger? The /ac/5 in the case 
are in no manner affected or changed by our feelings^ whatever 
they may be. If we are led to hate men hecause they are 
sinful and in danger, it is only by the perverted feelings of 
our own hearts, and is only a deeper proof of our own, and, 
therefore, of human depravity. It has not this effect in the bo- 
som of the Universal Father — the God of all the race ; for the 
conviction of the fall and ruin and danger of man has only led 
Him to give His Son — His only Son — to die. It had not this 
effect on the Son of God who came to save men ; for it was this 
very view which made Him willing to become incarnate, and 
to suffer on the cross. Has there ever been a greater love for 
mankind than this? 

(5.) Your fifth solution of the difficulty is, that science is do- 
ing much to mitigate the evils referred to, and that it may be 
hoped that it will do much more — particularly that it may be 
hoped that it will materially prolong human life. 

These thoughts you express in the following language: 

"Doubtless the day is coming when there will be comparatively little sin 
on the earth. Science, more than all other agencies, hastens the coming of 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 45 

tliis day. For we may reasonably liopo that, ^vhen science shall have more 
fully revealed to men the laws of their beino^, obedience to these laws will be 
in greater proportion to the knowledge of them than it now is. 

" When men shall have learned, as they yet will learn, the laws of life and 
health, and shall, as they yet will, faithfully keep them, there will not only 
be few or none of these premature deaths, but the ordinary length of this 
existence will probably be at least double its present threescore and ten 
years." (Pp. 7, 10.) 

Eespecting this theory I have only to remark : 

(a.) That thus far science has not done very much to dimin- 
ish the actual amount of sin on the earth, or to reform man- 
kind, nor have scientific men been the most zealous, as they 
certainly have not been the most successful reformers. 

(h.) That the progress of science has not as yet tended mate- 
rially to lengthen human life. You are pleased to express the 
hope that, " when men shall have better learned the laws of life 
and health," the "ordinary length of their existence will pro- 
bably be at least double its threescore and ten years." Yet it 
is a fact that since the time of Moses, a period of more than 
three thousand years, no perceptible progress has been made in 
that direction, nor are there any indications that any material 
progress is likely to be made, at least in our time. In the age 
of Moses, the regular limit of human life was "threescore 
years and ten," (Psalm 90 : 10 ;) the same is the regular limita- 
tion of human life now, nor does it appear from any statistics 
with which I am acquainted, that more persons exceed that 
period now than there were of the same character in the time of 
Moses. On w^hat evidence you rely in proof that there will be 
a material change in this respect, you have not been pleased to 
state. 

(c.) It is obvious to remark that, even if this should occur, the 
facts in the case would not be materially varied, nor would the 
difl&culty be essentially diminished. Death, the great source of 
th.e dij0S.culty, would still exist as really, and to the same ex- 
tent, as now; and, so far as appears, in as varied and as trying 
forms. That a man dies when he is old does not change the 
nature of death, nor did the fact that Methuselah lived nearly 
a thousand years do any thing to explain the fact that sin and 
death were allowed to come into the world. 

It might still be, also, that young persons would die ; it would 



46 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

be certain that all would ultimately die ; and, so far as appears, 
there would be as many and as varied forms of suffering upon 
the earth as there are now. 

I do not perceive, therefore, that the difficulty is explained 
or diminished by this gratuitous supposition. 

(6.) Your sixth statement is, that the grand remedy for the 
evils in the world is wealth. This remarkable statement is in 
the following words: 

'^Tlie longer I live, the more am I persuaded that wealth is what the world 
most needs for its redemption from ignorance, wickedness, and unhappiness. 
Enough of it is created by the toiling poor, and, in point of fact, they are 
nearly all who do create it. Alas ! that the misuse of much of it should be 
such as to make the toiling poor poorer. War, intemperance, excessive lux- 
ury, and giddy, reckless fashion are great wasters of wealth ; but no one of 
them wastes more than do the theologies, directly and indirectly. For in- 
stance, if the Christian theology had not so successfully passed itself off for the 
Christian religion, these evils, which I have just now enumerated, would, so 
far as Christendom is concerned, have been far less extensive, and their waste 
of wealth correspondingly less. Then, look at the hundreds of millions which 
it costs Christendom annually to build and support the churches and other 
establishments which this theology calls for !" (Pp. 11, 12. 

On this I liave to observe : 

((X.) That if the correctness of this statement should be ad- 
mitted, it would not explain the main difficulty ; that is, why 
the sin and misery to he remedied hy icealth have been permitted 
to come into the world. 

(5.) This would add another item to the difficulty itself, to wit, 
Tr%, under the divine administration, so much of that which, 
it would seem, is to remove all these evils, has been suffered to 
he wasted by the crimes of men ; by " war, intemperance, ex- 
cessive luxury, and giddy, reckless fashion." 

(c.) I am not sure that I correctly understand you, nor do I 
profess to be able to comprehend how the possession of " wealth" 
is to remove the evils of the world; that is, to reform and save 
wicked men. It is certain that hitherto its influence- has not 
been particularly marked in this respect, nor has it commonly 
been supposed that the fact that a man was becoming rich was 
essentially connected with the idea that he was becoming a good 
man ; or, that if he had been addicted to habits of vice, the ac- 
cumulation of wealth would necessarily reform him. It has 
been commonly supposed that the accumulation of wealth had 



SIN AND SUFFEEING IN THE UNIVEKSE. 47 

something to do with the corruption and fall of the Koman em- 
pire, nor has it been plain that since the fall of that empire the 
most wealthy nations, or the most wealthy individuals, have been 
necessarily the most virtuous. Nor has it been commonly sup- 
posed that the accumulation of wealth has had a tendency 
either to convert a bad man, or to make a good man better. It 
is undoubtedly true that a rich man may "inherit the kingdom 
of God;" but it has been generally believed that this result 
would be likely to occur in spite of his wealth, and not as the 
effect of it. The Saviour said (Luke 18 : 24) : " How hardly-— 
6vaK6X(j)g — shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom 
of Grod ;" implying that, although it viight be done, there were 
some peculiar difficulties to overcome in the case, rather than 
that there was any peculiar advantage, as you seem to suppose, 
in wealth as a means of reform, or as a "means of grace." How 
far the building of " plain halls " for the "plain, loving-hearted 
men and women " that might choose to " assemble" in them 
would promote the salvation of the great mass of mankind, or 
would remove the evils of the world, I should not feel myself 
competent to determine by any data in my possession. I ap- 
prehend, however, that there are evils in human society which 
the mere building of "plain halls " for such purposes would not 
be likely to remove. At all events, wealth is not so generally 
diffused in the world as to make it a universal agent in the work 
of reformation and salvation, nor has a state of society yet 
arisen where it could be. I treat this as a grave matter be- 
cause you have done so. 

(7.) Your seventh mode of meeting the difficulty is, that it 
may be hoped and expected that men will be in a more favor- 
able condition in the future world than they are here, and that, 
although the wicked may suffer there, yet there will be a better 
system of probation, so that all evil may come to an end. 

This, which is evidently your main reliance, you express in 
the following language : 

" Far am I from holding that there is no suffering in the next life. If there 
is sin there, (and I believe there is,) suffering is also there — for suffering 
necessarily attends sinning. 

" Indeed, we may reasonably hope that men will not sin forever — that, if 
not in this life, nevertheless in the next, their increasing knowledge will con- 
quer their ignorance, and their increasing virtue will conquer their tempta- 



48 SIN" AND SUFFERING IN" THE UNIVERSE. 

tions. So far from falling in with the irrational and God-dishonoring doctrine 
that the sinner will have no opportunities in the next life for reformation and 
improvement, we should allow reason and nature to inspire the expectation 
that such opportunities will be far greater there than here." 

On this solution I make the following remarks : 
(a.) It does not meet, and does not profess to meet, the main 
— the primary difficulty — the fact that sin and woe have been 
allowed to come into the system under the government of God, 
and that death and sorrow have been permitted to spread de- 
solation over this world, and to extend and perpetuate their do- 
minion from age to age. These things are undoubtedly in the 
world ; they exist under the government of God ; they are un- 
explained. "W hatever may occur hereafter, it is difficult to see 
how, if the facts should he as you suppose they will he in the fu- 
ture world, such an arrangement would throw any light on the 
question why sin and suffering were allowed to come into the 
universe at all. Even if it is supposed that there will be a het- 
ier system in the future world under which all these evils will 
come to an end, still, it may be asked, "Why should not that '■^het- 
fer 5?/5^fe?7^ " have been enjoyed in this life? Why should the 
^^not hetter^' one have existed at all? Why should man be 
doomed to go through all the sorrows, the dangers, the calami- 
ties of this life in order to reach that " better " sj^stem? Why 
should he have been allowed to sin here with the vague hope 
that in a future world there might be some " hetter system " 
where " increasing "knowledge would conquer his ignorance, and 
increasing virtue conquer his temptations" ? 

{b.) The doctrine of future punishment is admitted by you. 
Thus you say : " Far am T from holding that there is no suffer- 
ing in the next life. If there is sin there, as I believe there is, 
suffering is also there — for suffering necessarily attends sinning." 
With your views of man's free-agency, and of the inability of 
God to control a free-agent so as to restrain him from sin with- 
out violating his essential freedom, it was a logical consequence 
that you should admit that there might be sin in the future 
world, and, so far as it appears, at any 'period in that world — 
since the principle applies to one period there as well as to an- 
other: that is, at any period in .the future world there may be 
sin and suffering; or, in other words, it may exist forever. 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 49 

But in the concession which j-oii have thus made, you have 
yielded the main point in the difficulty. 

(c.) What, then, is the ground of your hope that the "oppor- 
tunities for information and improvement will be far greater 
there than here" ? 

You refer to no evidence or proof oxi the subject. 

You do not even suggest liow it may be done. 

You allude to no Saviour to interpose and modify the con- 
dition of the sinner and the sufferer there. 

You adduce no promise that there will be such an improved 
condition of things there. 

You have such ideas of freedom that there can be no security 
that man will not sin and suffer there, and sin and smEqt forever. 

You have affirmed that God does all that He can do to save 
men here ; that "He has not the ability lo save any man with- 
out the help of that man." 

It may be presumed, therefore, that God will have exhausted 
his power of saving before men reach the future world, certainly 
that He will have no greater power to save there than He has 
here. 

You hold, also, that the universe is governed by fixed laws, 
and that those laws " leave no room for a passionate di^ndi change- 
ful God, and no room for the working of miracles," (p. 14;) 
and, from the nature of the case, those unvarying and unchange- 
able laws must exist there as well as here, in order to produce 
harmony, or to prevent disturbance in the general system. 

Of the truth of the opinion which you have thus expressed, 
there is not the slightest hint in the Bible. Indeed, you do not 
refer to the Bible as making any intimation on the subject, or 
as laying the foundation of any such hope ; and whether, if the 
Bible did do this, it would have any value in your view, or af- 
ford any ground of probability that it will be so, may be better 
understood from the views which you express in regard to the 
Bible, to which I shall refer in the next letter. 

Such, then, are your dim and shadowy, and I may say, darh 
views in regard to the future world ; such are your hopes that 
sin and woe will find an end in the universe ; such is the pros- 
pect which arises before your mind in reference to the condition 
of man as he enters on the future state. I ask now, are these 
4 



So SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

sufficient for a philosopher to rest upon? Are they fitted to 
dissipate all gloom, and to dispel all anxiety ? Are they adapt- 
ed to answer the questions which we may ask, and to give peace 
and calmness to one who is soon to enter the dark world? 

I have thus examined your solution of the difficulties in the 
case. In my next and closing letter I shall consider the views 
of religion which you have expressed as lying at the founda- 
tion of your solution of the difficulties referred to, and the 
question whether your system has greater advantages than my 
own, or is better fitted to make the mind calm in a world like 
ours. 

I am, with great respect, truly yours, 

Albert Barnes. 



LETTER Y. 

Hon. Gerrit Smith: 

Dear Sir : In my last two letters to you, I have considered 
your solution of the difficulties involved in the existence of sin 
and suffering in the universe. In this my closing letter, I pro- 
pose to consider the views of religion which you have express- 
ed as lying at the foundation of your explanation of these diffi- 
culties, and the question whether your system is better fitted 
than my own to confer happiness, and to make the mind calm 
in a world like ours. 

I am not at liberty, nor am I disposed, nor am I sufficiently 
informed as to your views on that subject, to go outside of your 
letter. I know nothing on that point, and if I did, it would 
not be courteous in an argument like this to refer to those views. 
Within that limit, however, courtesy requires nothing but a fair 
interpretation of your language. I shall make use of a proper 
freedom, not inconsistent with courtesy, in a brief but fair ex- 
amination of your views of religion, as you have expressed 
them, as bearing on the subject. 

(1.) Your views of man : 

Man, according to your view, is not only made free — a point 
on which we should not differ — but is so made that he can not, 
even bjr moral influence exerted even by his Maker, be restrain- 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 51 

ed effectually from sin without violating Lis freedom, and so 
made that if be sins he can not be recovered, even by divine 
power, except by his own agency : " He (God) has not the abi- 
lity to save any man without the help of that man." "When 
God made man so great as ' to will and to do ' for himself, lie 
made him too great to be saved by the direct and unaided power 
even of God Himself." (P. 9.) 

This essential condition must be the same, from the necessity 
of the case, in the future world, whether in the world of happi- 
ness or the world of woe, for it is, according to your view, the 
necessary condition of true liberty. There can be, therefore, no 
certainty of continued, much less of eternal happiness, in the 
heavenly state, for all such restraint there as to make obedience to 
the divine will certain^ would be a violation of freedom ; nor can 
there be any deliverance from the world of woe, into which 
men may fall by divine power, since — (a.) the divine power in 
this respect is exhausted in the present world ; and (&.) man will 
be "too great" there — greater there than here — to "be saved 
by the direct and unaided power of God Himself." God has 
thus, according to this view, made the mistake, or committed 
the absurdity, of bringing powers and faculties into existence 
which He can not control ; of making a being whom He can not 
himself restrain or govern ; of forming an intelligent and re- 
sponsible agent, necessarily immortal, who can destroy himself, 
and make himself forever miserable, in spite of all that God can 
do. Dark prospect, this, for you and me, and for the number- 
less millions that God has chosen to create upon the .earth, and, 
so far as appears, for the inhabitants of all worlds. One would 
prefer at least not to live in such a^universe as this — in the un- 
avoidable anarchy where a powerless God attempts to reign 
over His own creatures, but attempts it in vain. 

(2.) Your views of God: 

I have already, in part, noticed your idea of God, that He 
does all that He can to save men ; that His power over them is 
exhausted in this life; that He has made man ''too great" for 
His control ; that, as all this pertains to Him essentially, it must 
extend to the future world as well as to this; and that, conse- 
quently, He would be unable to save men there, since man, "too 
great" for Him here, must, a fortiori^ be much more so there; 



52 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

that is, if the "human faculties expand and develop themselves 
there in any proportion to what is done here. 

I have now only to add, that, according to your view of God, 
He is either absolutely unable, or indisposed, to interfere in any 
case in the affairs of the universe by an act of intervention that 
could be properly called a " miracle :" that is, where His own loill 
and power would he the only antecedent or cause of an event. The 
universe, according to your view, is controlled by fixed and un- 
changeable laws — by laws that are in no case to be interrupted or 
set aside by the power of God. 

This view of God you have expressed in the following lan- 
guage: 

" It is entirely unreasonable to expect that our science-enligliten ed agesliall 
hold to the theologies constructed in an age of darkness — an age when it 
was believed that the earth was a plane of only a few hundred miles in cir- 
cumference, and yet of such paramount importance that the sun, moon, and 
stars were made but to serve it — and an age, too, when it was believed that 
God's dealings with His children, instead of being directed by unvarying laws, 
were but the irregular and fitful impulses, now of His love and now of His ha- 
tred, now of His revenge and now of His repentance. How is it possible that 
Europe and America, having learned that the earth is but a speck in an illim- 
itable universe, and that the unvarying laws which govern both leave no 
room for a passionate and changeful God, and no room for the working ofmira- 
iCles — how is it possible, I say, that they can much longer continue to have 
patience with these puerile theologies ?" (P. 14.) 

From the power of God, therefore, there can be no hope for 
the sinner and the sufferer in the future world, and as you ad- 
mit that man may sin and suffer there, (page 7,) it follows that, 
so far as God is concerned, the sinner and the sufferer there 
must be absolutely helpless. How far does this differ in regard 
to what is dark and inscrutable from the common representa- 
tions, among those who believe in the Bible, of the condition of 
the wicked in the future world ? 

But my concern with this statement now is merely as a re- 
presentation of your view of God as a Being of limited powers ; 
as having, by misfortune or accident, made men ^^too greaV^ for 
Himself to govern; as being incnpable of converting man, if he 
should go astray,by any power of His own; and as being so bound, 
fettered, and compelled, by the physical and fixed laws of the uni- 
verse, that He can not, either in this world or the next, interpose 
h^ " miracle," or by the direct operation of His own power, to save 



SIN" AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 53 

a sinner : a part of the "puerile theologies" with which the world 
can not "much longer continue to have patience." 

If this is a correct view of God, then it will become the duty 
of the Christian world forthwith tochange one article at least of 
the " Apostles' Creed " — and that the very first article : " I be- 
lieve in God, the Father Almighty." 

(3.) Your views of Christ: 

As T have already observed, I am not at liberty, and have no 
desire to inquire into your views outside of your statements in 
your letter to me. But it must be evident that a man's views 
on the whole subject of religion, and especially on that subject 
considered in your letter to me, must be greatly modified by his 
views of the Saviour. 

I do not find in your letter any distinct statement that you 
regard the salvation of men, either from sin in the present world, 
or from suffering in the world to come, as in any respect de- 
pendent on the work of Christ, or as in any way connected 
with an atonement for sin. But I am not authorized — as I am 
not disposed — by this fact to infer that you hold that there is 
no such dependence ; but I may be permitted to express my sur- 
prise that, if you do cherish such a belief, there should have 
been no allusion to it in a letter on such a subject as the salva- 
tion of men, especially since you have made "science" and 
" wealth " here, and the hope of a more " favorable condition " 
in the future world, so prominent. 

What I do find on the subject in your letter is embraced in 
the following items : 

(a.) That Christ did not pretend to know all the future. (P. 
9.) 

ih) That the only proof that there is "an eternal hell " is 
"one word, said^ to have been spoken by Jesus," (p. i^,) imply- 
ing that one word from Him, even if ascertained to have been 
uttered by Him, would not have been sufficient to establish a 
doctrine. On what ground you have said that He spoke only 
'''one word " on the subject you have not informed the woild. 
The New Testament certainly represents Him as having spoken 
many words on that subject; SiS, very frequently referring to it ; as 
expressing His views in the most decided and unambiguous 
language. 



54 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

(c.) According to yonr view, we have no certain evidence 
that Christ spoke even that '•''one word." You refer to it as a 
word ^^said to have been spoken by Jesus," (p. 9.) You then 
proceed to remark : 

" But how far it is from certain, that He spoke it, and, especially, that He 
spoke it, intending it to have the meaning given to it in our translation, and 
by our ecclesiastical standards ! Although we have satisfactory evidence that 
He spoke substantially as the New Testament says He did, we have no right 
to believe that His speeches were, word for word, as recorded in that book." 

According to this representation, we have no evidence that we 
possess any thing that He spoke. It is true that jou say that 
" we have satisfactory evidence that He spoke substantially 
as the New Testament says He did ;" yet if there is uncertainty 
in regard to this "one word," it is plain that there may be a like 
uncertainty in regard to any other "word" said to have been 
spoken by Him ; that is, there is an entire uncertainty as to what 
He spoke on any subject ; or, in other words. His recorded 
speeches in the New Testament are of no authority whatever, 
and it would be wrong to found any doctrine on what Christ is 
reported to have said. If I am not to believe this "one word" 
about hell, why am I to believe His " one word" about heaven? 
He referred to the former quite as frequently as He did to the 
latter. 

((i.) His religion, according to you, was so simple that it was 
not necessary to attempt to prove it by miracles. Thus you 
say: 

*' In this connection, let me say how infinitely absurd is the doctrine, that a 
religion so simple and so obviously true as is the Christ religion, needs to be 
proved by miracles. The theologies are not worth proving ; and, therefore, 
no miracles are called for in their case." (P. 13.) 

That is, all His claims to the power of working miracles were 
false, and all that He did in this respect was to be traced to jug- 
glery or deception. It was in no sense true that He healed the 
sick, or opened the eyes of the blind, or made the deaf to hear, 
or raised the dead ; and the whole story about Lazarus was a 
fabrication — an imposture — a delusion. Yet no one that ever 
lived in our world, if the records about Christ are ^'■substantial- 
ly''^ true, ever professed or pretended to work so many miracles 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 55 

as He did ; no one, therefore, stands before mankind as so stu- 
pendous an impostor. 

(e.) It is, according to your view, if I understand you, wholly 
uncertain what became of Jesus. If the account in the ISIew 
Testament is even ^'substantially^ true, it may be assumed that He 
was put to death on the cross — although this is not more directly 
or positively affirmed than it is that He raised Lazarus from the 
grave. But according to your view, it is certain that there can 
be no proof that He ascended to heaven — though this is more 
than " substantially'^ affirmed in the New Testament. Thus you 
say (p. 5): 

"But little evidence is necessary to prove that a man has died. That his 
breathless body went straightway into the sky could hardly be believed on any 
amount of evidence." 

He must, therefore, either have remained in the grave, or, if He 
rose from the dead. He must have died again at some time, and 
in some place, and in some manner, not even '' substantially" re- 
corded. Which of these is the true statement in regard to Him 
you have not informed us. 

(4.) Your views of the Bible : 

Your views on that subject are very unequivocally expressed 
in the following language : 

" It is, indeed, the best of books — a repository of the sublimest inspirations, 
principles, and precepts. Nevertheless, it abounds in foolish, false, and exceed- 
ingly pernicious things. Its silly, and some of them very revolting stories 
about the Red Sea, the sun and moon, the whale and Jonah, Lot's wife turn- 
ing into salt, the control of the skies by Elijah's prayer, God's sending 'lying 
spirits' into his children, etc., etc., have ever continued to feed to fatness the su- 
perstition of Christendom. The Bible's wicked curse upon Canaan has been 
the prevailing plea with so-called Christians for carrying fire and sword into 
Africa, and robbing her of tens of millions of her children. Its causeless and 
cruel wars, charged on God Himself, justify every war and every murder. Its 
one short line, ' Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,' has cost the hanging 
and burning of many thousands of innocent women, and not a few innocent 
men, for the fanciful crime of witchcraft. Its making woman guilty of the 
first sin, and its charging chiefly upon that sin her pains in child-bearing, 
have gone far to justify man in stamping her with inferiority and in playing 
the tyrant over her. Its representing God to be the hater of men, and of some 
even before they were born, must go far toward making it impossible for 
those who believe in such a God to have just minds and loving hearts. In its 
own words, ' And what shall I say more ? for the time would fail me to tell of ' 
all the foolish and abominable things in this book, which ecclesiastical author- 



56 SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

ity commands us to gulp down, or, ' without picking and culling,' as one of my 
good old ministers reqiiired, I said the Bible was the best of books. It is such, 
when it is allowed to be read in freedom and with discrimination. But it is, 
perhaps, not too much to say that it is the worst of books, when read under 
authority, and with no liberty to call any of its words in question. 

" This belief that every word of the Bible is true — how much e-sil it has 
wrought !" (Pp. 10, 11.) 

There are several particulars here that deserve special atten- 
tion. My object in noticing them will not be at all to inquire 
into the truth or correctness of your representations of the Bible 
—which is a point not before us now — but to look at the book 
as, with this view, adapted to help us out of our dif&culties in 
regard to the state of things actually existing in the world: the 
fact of the introduction of sin and misery, and the probability of 
the continuance of sin and suffering beyond the grave — as a book 
adapted to clear up the darkness that rests on the subject, and 
to make the mind calm. The particular things in the Bible, 
according to your view of the book, which seem to claim special 
attention, are the following: 

{a.) "It is the best of books — a repository of the sublimest 
inspirations, principles, and precepts." 

{h.) " It abounds in foolish, false, and exceedingly pernicious 
things." 

(c.) It has been the cause of all the wrongs done to Africa: 
in your estimation, and in mine, not trivial or small. 

(d) It has been the main support and cause of all the perse- 
cutions against witchcraft, and of the crimes connected with such 
persecution. 

(e.) It has revealed a "monstrous God." Thus you say, 
(p. 8,) of certain things which occurred among the Hebrew peo- 
ple, "Their enormities grew largely out of their belief in that 
vindictive^ bloody^ and MONSTROUS God, who, unhappily, became 
the God of the Christian nations also^ 

(/) It prevents men, by its instructions and doctrines, from 
"having just minds and loving hearts." 

{g.) There is nothing certain about it. Thus you say, (p. 9,) 
of the Saviour, that " it is far from certain that He spoke what 
is recorded of Him." And again you say : "We have no right 
to believe that His speeches were, word for word, as recorded in 
that book." 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 57 

{h.) The Bible is, according to your view, fall of falsehoods. 
It undoubtedly affirms that Christ, after His resurrection from the 
dead, ascended to heaven. Bat you say, (p. 5,) "But little evi- 
dence is necessary to prove that a man has died. That his 
breathless body went straightway into the sky could hardly he 
helieved on any amount of evidence ^ And thus you say, (p. 14,) 
that, in the divine administration, under the unvarying laws 
which govern the universe, there is "?2o room for the working of 
miracles,'' and that the vforld can not much longer "have pa- 
tience with the puerile theologies " which teach these things. 
But the Bible is fidl of miracles. They are its very warp and 
woof They enter into its very structure. They are found on 
almost every page. Yet, according to your view, all these^from 
heginning to end, are falsehoods ; the account of the creation of 
the world, and of man ; the account of the deluge, and of the 
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the account of miracles in 
Egypt, and of the deliverance of the Israelites, and of the pass- 
ing througli the Red Sea ; the account of the incarnation of the 
Redeemer, and of His healing the sick, and restoring the blind, 
the lame, and the deaf; the account of the raising of Lazarus, 
nd of His own resurrection and ascension. No book is so full 
of marvels and miracles as the Bible. Not Herodotus or Livy ; 
not even the Iliad or the ^neid ; not the Inferno of Dante, or 
the Paradise Lost,; and, therefore, on your theor}^, no book is so 
full of falsehoods as the Bible. Is this, then, the " best of 
books" ? Is there, for benighted man, no better guide to a fu- 
ture world ; no better, safer instructor than this ? Yes : the 
works of Seneca and Cicero are better, for there are not so many 
falsehoods in them. The Koran is better, for it does not pre- 
tend to record the working of miracles by the prophet. There 
are many books that are not full of foolish things ; that do not 
sustain the wrongs against Africa ; that do not reveal a " mon- 
strous" God; that do not record "foolish and abominable 
things;" that do not on almost every page record a falsehood. 
Such a book as the Bible is, according to your view, is wholly 
unreliable as a history; wholly unworthy of God as a revela- 
tion ; wholly valueless to man as a traveler to another world ; 
wholly undesirable in its influences on the morals and the hap- 
piness of mankind. How this book can be called the ^^ best of 



58 SIN" AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

hooks^^^ is a mystery wbich I shall not attempt to explain. If 
this is the "^es^' of books, which is the worst of books? 

Such, then, are your views of man, of God, of Christ, of the Bi- 
ble. I do not now say that they are erroneous views, for that is 
not the point before us ; I only say that they are your views. 
You ask me to exchange my own long-cherished opinions for 
these, in order that I may obtain light and peace in regard to 
the dark things on earth which perplex men ; in regard to the 
unsolved mysteries of the future world. It will probably occur 
to your own mind at this stage of the inquiry, that I shall not 
be likely to embrace your suggestion. Whether your views will 
be more satisfactory to other men than they are to me, is not 
for me to judge. 

I have now gone over the main points in your letter, and have 
finished what I intended to say. I have endeavored to be cour- 
teous, but at the same time I have desired to write you such a 
letter that you would not be likely to write me another. You 
will, at least, I think, give me credit for not having given you 
occasion to do this by any designed misrepresentation of your 
views. 

Thus we pass on — you and I toward the end of our journey 
— an end to either of us not now far distant. You, if I have 
correctly understood your views, with a belief that man is so 
made that there can be no security that he will not sin while in 
this world, or in any future condition ; that no power can be 
properly exerted to prevent his sinning without violating his 
freedom ; that by his being so endowed as thus to sin, and thus 
to set his Maker at defiance, he shows his real greatness ; that 
he can so sin that his Creator can not recover him except by 
his own agency, or, in other words, can do nothing to effect this 
without violating his freedom ; and that all this is essential to 
just views of moral agency, and must exist in the future world 
as well as in this, and consequently that there can never be a 
state in which man can be secure from sin, and therefore from 
suffering. Thus, too, you hold in regard to God, that His pow- 
er is limited by the human will, He having made man so " great" 
that He can not control him ; that He does all that He can to save 
him from ruining himself, but in vain ; that He exhausts His 
power in this respect in the present life, and that man enters the 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 59 

eternal world with no hope of help from his Maker ; and that 
God Himself is so bound and controlled by the fixed and inex- 
orable laws of the universe, that He can not interpose even by a 
miracle to aid and save man. Thus, too, in regard to Christ, 
you hold that we have no certain knowledge of what He said at 
any time ; that even if we were assured that He had made an 
affirmation on any subject. His word would not establish its 
truth ; and that it is impossible to prove that He ascended to 
heaven in a bodily form. What became of that Saviour, 
whose existence you do not deny, but assume, you do not 
say ; what He did for man you have not informed us ; what He 
taught we have no means of ascertaining. Thus, also, in regard 
to the Bible. You profess to consider it as the " best of books," 
but at the same time describe it as a book of no practical value; 
a book that reveals a God that can not possibly be loved, hon- 
ored, or adored ; a book full of puerilities and trifles ; a book 
not reliable as a history, and full of falsehoods ; a book in rela- 
tion to which we have no possible means of determining what 
is false and what is true; a book that has been the occasion of 
numberless crimes, wars, persecutions, and acts of tyranny and 
oppression in the world ; a book, therefore, wholly worthless 
and valueless as a guide to another world. 

I, on the other hand, cherish the belief that man, though free, 
may be restrained, converted from sin, and made secure in holi- 
ness consistently with his freedom ; that God has the power to 
convert and save the most hardened offenders, and to sanctify the 
vilest of the race ; that He rules the universe with infinite wis- 
dom and goodness, though we may not be able now to com- 
prehend the reason of His doings ; that there is an all-sufficient 
Saviour provided for man, and that, through Him, salvation, on 
easy and reasonable terms, is sincerely offered to all mankind ; 
that God has given to man a revelation — not foolish, puerile, 
unreliable, contradictory, and absurd, but a safe and reliable 
guide in all that is necessary or desirable for man to know or 
to believe in order to salvation ; that a sinner may be saved, 
and that ivhen saved his salvation will be secure forever and 
ever. 

In the m^\n facts in regard to the introduction of sin and woe 
into our world, we do not — we can not — differ. The facts are 



60 SIN" AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 

before our eyes, and we can 'not deny them. In regard also to 
the existence of sin and woe beyond the grave we do not differ 
essentia Uj^, for you have expressly admitted that they will exist 
there. For myself I confess that all this is dark. I do not un- 
derstand it now ; I do not hope to be able to "understand it in 
this present life. But I entertain no doubt that it may be "un- 
derstood, and that it is consistent with the idea, that God is 
just, and wise, and good ; that He is worthy of universal confi- 
dence, adoration, affection, and praise : and such a God, T be- 
lieve, presides over all. Your system seems to me not only to 
offer no explanation of these facts, but to involve the whole 
subject in deeper darkness and gloom — in worse than Egyptian 
darkness — a darkness which, if you will allow me to quote from 
a book which you say is full of " puerilities" and " absurdities," 
is as " the shadow of death ; a land of darkness, as darkness it- 
self; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where 
the light is as darkness." (Job 10 : 21, 22.) 

It is not probable that at my time of life I shall materially 
change my views in regard to subjects the study of which has 
constituted my main employment for more than forty years; 
nor can I suppose that you will materially change yours. We 
shall probably both of us leave the world cherishing the opin- 
ions which we now hold on the most vital points which can 
occupy the attention of the human mind. 

We shall leave to our friends and to the world, so far as the 
world may feel any interest in knowing what we believed, these 
two very different systems as the result of the studies, the re- 
flections, the observations, of our somewhat protracted lives. 
For myself, while living, and as a legacy to my friends when I 
am dead, I wish some better system than that which jom have 
proposed, and which I have so freely examined; and I desire to 
leave to the world, so far as the world shall care any thing 
about what I believed, when I shall pass away from among the 
living, my deep and unalterable conviction that every sinner 
under the divine government is in danger; that there is beyond 
the grave a world of just and eternal retribution ; that there 
will be a judgment of all mankind : but that there is a way of 
salvation from the wrath to come for all men ; that Christ has 
died as the great atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world ; 



SIN AND SUFFERING IN THE UNIVERSE. 61 

that the benefits of that sacrifice are freely offered to every man 
on terms simple, reasonable, and easily complied with ; and that 
God has given to mankind a revelation, not puerile, trifling, 
and absurd — not deepening the darkness of our condition — but 
full of li(/hl, a safe and sufficient guide to another and a better world. 
I am, with great respect, truly yours, 

Albert Barnes. 



REJOINDER, 



SECOND LETTER 



FROM 



GERRIT SMITH TO ALBERT BARNES. 



Peterboro, August 15, 1868. 
Eev. Albert Barnes : 

My Dear Sir : Had I, wlien writing my letter to you, fore- 
seen that it would be thoroughly reviewed, and this, too, by a 
master hand, I should, doubtless, have written it more cautious- 
ly. Nevertheless, I do not regret having written it. For 
whether it stand or fall before your elaborate and searching 
criticism, it serves the cause of truth by having furnished an 
occasion for this criticism. Be my letter sound or unsound, it 
has done good — the great good of bringing out your Eeply. 

Your Eeply has much value : First, because of its argument, 
which is ingenious, lucid, scholarly ; Second, because of its spi- 
rit, which is patient, gentle, lovely ; Third, because it is a reply 
to a heretic. It is the wont of Orthodoxy, when approached by 
heresy, to wrap itself up in its imagined infallibility, and to 
make either silent or outspoken contempt its only answer. That 
you, than whom Orthodoxy boasts no nobler advocate, should 
respect the rights and dignity of manhood even in a heretic, and 
should consent both to hear and answer him, is an instance of 
liberahty and manliness, of freedom from arrogance and sancti- 
moniousness, that is truly i-efreshing, and that can not fail to 
extend its happy influence far beyond the limits of a single na- 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 63 

tion. In this you have made Orthodoxy your great debtor by 
vindicating it from the charge tliat every one upon its roll is ne- 
cessarily narrow, conceited, and contemptuous. Since, however, 
you deny that " sin is an infinite evil," and that the stealing of a 
pin " deserves infinite punishment," I am not entirely sure that 
you can be properly enrolled among the Orthodox. But I must 
use no more words before proceeding to criticise your criticism. 
For I must be so fair to you, as not to occupy more space with 
both my Letter and Eejoinder than you have occupied. I will 
take up in their order the five Letters which constitute your 
Reply. 



LETTER L 

Your objecting to my use of "confessedly," is entirely just. 
" Obviously," or some other word not involving your assent, 
would have been the proper one. 

I see that, like other theologians, you still puzzle your brain 
with the problem of the introduction of sin into the world. A 
problem as purely fanciful as is any other part of the fanciful 
theology with which it is connected, your intelligence should 
have discarded, long ago. A striking- instance this, how hard 
it is for even the wisest men to escape from a life-long notion, 
be it ever so absurd. Nothing can be more groundless than 
the idea so generally entertained, that sin is a something sent 
into the world, and sent into it, too, by God — ay, an ingredient 
or constituent in the world's make up. Sin is simply the refu- 
sal or neglect of a man to abide by the laws of his being. As 
well might it be said that Grod sent into the world the mistake 
a man falls into in adding up a column of figures, as that He 
sent into it the sin of refusing to pay a just debt, or to 
respect the value of human life. God has made man a free 
agent, and capable of choosing between right and wrong, between 
the sin and the no-sin ; and to the eye whose vision is still na- 
tural, instead of being distorted and deceived by these theologi- 
cal glasses, here is all there is of this famed sending of sin into 
the world. Blessed be God, that He made man capable of this 
choice ! For had He made him any thing less. He must neces- 



64 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

sarily have made him a comparatively mean creature and a 
mere machine. 

You can not conceive why God should have made man capa- 
ble of this choice. Pardon my conceit and its boldness, when I 
say that /can. It is only in the exercise of this choice that 
man can build up for himself that beautiful and sublime cha- 
racter to which he has already attained in part, and which will 
be increasingly his, as he moves onward and upward through 
the ages. Do you say that he is not advanced from his begin- 
ning ? In this you reckon from his fancied state before his fan- 
cied Fall. I prefer the more rational and more fact-sustained 
theory, which makes the original man far inferior to his present 
successors. I look upon man as still in his infancy, and in the 
ignorance of infancy. What is more, I know him to be still in 
the bonds of theological superstitions. These bonds have be- 
gun to loosen, and he has, therefore, entered upon a more rapid 
elevation. Wait but a few generations longer, and science will 
have gotten a firm hold of his hand,jand will be leading him up 
her glorious steeps to planes of life higher than he can now 
descry, and where his enlightened religion will be as ennobling 
as his present superstitions are degrading. 

I confess my belief that there will be suffering in the next 
life. He, who ends this life a sinner, will begin the next a sin- 
ner. For the death of his body can not change his moral cha- 
racter. Suffering must ever accompany sinning. I can not say 
but there are persons who will sin forever. If there are, they 
will suffer foreve . Strong, however, as are the inducements in 
this life to stop sinning, I trust that there will be stronger in the 
next; and that, in the end, all will become so truly enlighten- 
ed, as no longer to resist, but freely and fully to 11 in with, 
the laws of their being. Then there will be none to remain 
unhappy. 

No, I do not believe it is man's nature to sin. It is his na- 
ture not to sin. It is his nature to obey the laws of his nature- 
It is the perversion of his nature that violates them. 

Yes, I believe that God works with man to save him from 
sinning. He furnishes to man the laws of his being ; and man 
is saved from sinning just so far as he obeys these laws. I do 
not hold that " the power of God in this respect is exhausted in 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 65 

tbe present life." I hope that it extends with undiminished 
vigor into the next ; and I hope, too, ([ say Iwpe, for I know 
nothing of tlie future life,) that, as I have already virtually 
said, man will there be more disposed than he is here to do 
his part in saving himself Irom sin. 

You are right in saying that I believe God governs " by un- 
varying and established laws." I see no room for the doctrine 
of "special providence." Whence, then, says the objector, the 
fitness of prayer ? But he is effectaally answered by the inqui- 
ry how he knows that prayer is not among these laws, that 
prayer is not among the " conditions precedent" to the bestowal 
of some of the Divine blessings. 

I do not agree with you, that the popular fear of future pun- 
ishment is " laid permanently in the human mind," and that God 
has filled the world with fear and alarm " in regard to the fu- 
ture." This is all the work of superstition and priestcraft. But 
for this, churches of tlie present type, whether in Heathendom 
or Christendom, could not be sustained. Priestcraft keeps up 
the superstitions. The superstitions keep up the dread; and 
the dread keeps up the churches. Withdraw from them that 
" dread of something after death," of which you say Hamlet 
speaks, and the churclies in America, as well as elsewhere, would 
fall flat. Oh ! no, the fear that shrivels up man, and makes 
him a coward and a liar, is not the gift of God. The children 
of men have, in all ages, been the subjects of superstitious fears. 
No wonder! For the gods in their religions are full of wrath. 
Even the Christian's God is represented as having " vials full 
of the wrath of God." And no wonder that the peoples are 
wrathful as well as cowardly. Let them exchange their wrath- 
ful Gods for loving ones, and soon would they be loving peo- 
ples. Soon would thi^y cease to oppress and make war, and 
soon would the earth cease to be a hell of hate, and become a 
heaven of love. 

When I say that priestcraft keeps up the superstitions, I do 
not mean that all priests, or ministers of religion, aim at this. 
No small share of them scorn priestcraft, and labor to perpetu- 
ate the superstitions only because they honestly identify them 
with the true religion. Nevertheless, i fc remains true, as a general 
proposition, that priestcraft working back of the honest priests,. 
5 



66 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

and in ways and witli designs of which these honest priests 
are unconscious and even unsuspicious, set the ecclesiastical 
wheels in motion, and keep them in motion. And so, also, it is 
true that when priestcraft shall stop, these wheels will stop. 

Oh ! no, it is not fear, but love, which is " laid permanently 
in the human mind ;" and the world, when science shall have ex- 
pelled superstition from it, will be filled, not with fear, but with 
love. Pulpits there will still be; but they will no longer 
preach " the terrors of the Lord." They will preach only of 
His love. 



LETTEK II. 

I ENTIRELY agree with you : 

First. That sin and suffering are facts. 

Second. That they come not of Chance. 

Third. That they come not of Fate. 

Fourth. That " the supposition that God could not prevent 
sin " is to be rejected. 

Fifth. That the "idea that God resolved to introduce sin and 
misery . . . simply to show His power . . . and 
for displays of the divine character " should not be entertained. 

Sixth. That, accounting for sin and suffering, " on the sup- 
position that . . . God prefers sin to holiness, evil to 
good, misery to happiness," is absurd. 

Seventh. That no value should attach to the fancy of " two 
original and independent principles — good and evil — in the 
universe, struggling with each other." 

Eighth. That the doctrine of " Universal Salvation " does not 
help to explain the existence of sin and suffering. 

But, when you hold that " God could create an order of free 
agents so that they would not sin," I answer that you are right, 
provided that they shall be under no temptation to sin, under 
no motive nor influence to depart from the laws of their being. 
If, however, you mean that He could create them so that they 
could not sin, you are wrong, unless you allow that, in such, 
case, they must be created infinite in knowledge and goodness 
— in knowledge as well as goodness — since the least ignorance 



1 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 67 

of a law of our being may lead to its transgression. That such 
transgression, committed however ignorantly, and therefore with, 
however little criminality, is nevertheless sin, you doubtless 
believe. '^ Sin is the transgression of the law." That there are 
free agents, who do not sin, you believe to be true in the case 
of the inhabitants of far-distant worlds. But uncertain as is the 
help, which the Bible affords in any such matters, it certainly 
affords none in that case ; for when the Bible was written 
the existence of those worlds was not so much as suspected. 
You, also, argue the compatibility of sinlessness with free 
agency, by referring to "unfallen angels." I know nothing 
either of " unfallen angels " or of fallen angels. It is true that 
both kinds are spoken of in the Bible. But not even the Bible 
is free from mistakes. 

" The theory that sin is the necessary means of the greatest 
good," does not suit you. Whether it is a true or false theory I 
do not know, and have no means of knowing. But I do know 
that, when you add, "What good, if any, could come out of the 
permission of evil, which could not have been secured in an- 
other manner, has never been shown," you, improperly, throw 
off the burden of proof from your own shoulders to mine. I refer 
you to the great good there is, and to the much greater good 
there might be, where men are made capable of sinning. It 
is for you to show me an instance of still greater good 
where men are made incapable of sinning. It is not for me to 
show that there is not, but for you to show that there is, such 
an instance. It is not for me to prove the negative, but for you 
to prove the affirmative. Fancies about angels or about dwellers 
in the stars, you, of course, do not offer as proof 



LETTER III. 

I PASS over all that part of your Third Letter which precedes 
your taking up in numerical order what you regard as my 
positions. I am justified in doing so by my belief that what 
I have said, and what I shall say, will answer the part 
passed over. 

Your entering upon this numerical order is as follows : 



68 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

" (1.) The first point wliicli you rely upon is, that man is so made necessarily 
that he can sin, and that the origin of evil is to be traced wholly to the free- 
dom of man, or to the freedom of the will ; or, in other words, that sin is 
inseparable from the notion of free agency, and that this constitutes the true 
nobleness of man, and is a matter for thankfulness and rejoicing." 

Pardon me for saying that I do not recognize this to be my 
position. I do not see that you were authorized to bring in the 
word " necessarily ;" nor that you were authorized to interpret 
me as holding that " sin is inseparable from the notion of free 
agency;" nor as holding that such inseparableness " constitutes 
the true nobleness of man, and is a matter for thankfulness 
and rejoicing." 

Misapprehending my position as you did, it is not strange 
that you proceed to involve me in so long a detail of glaring 
absurdities ; not strange that you make me virtually say that 
the " nobleness " of Adam, Cain, Noah, Lot, Judas, etc., etc., 
was not in their capacity to do good, but in their capacity to do 
evil. You go even beyond the scope of my position, as you 
had unconsciously modified that position, when you add that I 
proportion a man's "nobleness " to the greatness of his actual 
sinning, and that I measure " the real greatness and nobleness 
of man by the greatness of his sin ; or by the fact that he does 
sin greatly." 

I wish you had quoted the whole, instead of a part of the 
paragraph on the sixth page of my Letter. In the light of the 
whole paragraph I am not as great an admirer of sin as I am in 
the light of your comments upon a part of it. 

All you have said at this point (and this makes np a large 
part of your third Letter) falls to the ground because of your 
misapprehension of my position ; and, hence, what you have 
said at this point calls for no reply. Surely, my pleasure in 
God's having made man capable of choosing between righteous- 
ness and wickedness is not the same as my pleasure in his 
choosing wickedness. Surely, surely, my pleasure in man's 
being made capable of the commission of very great wickedness, 
because I argue from it his capability of bringing forth as great 
goodness, is not all one with my taking pleasure in such com- 
mission. The great powers with which a highly gifted man is 
working vast evil are the same powers, now abused and per- 
verted, which were given him to work vast good with. 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 69 

I pass on to jour version of my next position. You say : 

" (2.) Your second principle in explaining the facts to which I referred is, 
that God saves all that He can, and that, consequently, the fact, that men are 
lost, if they are lost, is because God can not save them." 

You sliould have added, " against their will," or, "without 
their help." 

You refer to Saul, Augustine, and John [N'ewton: and I 
reply that even they, great sinners as they were, were not saved 
independently of their own agency. I fully agree with you, 
that there was no "violation of liberty in the power, which had 
been put forth by God to turn them to Himself;" and I have 
never supposed that there was such violation in the case of any 
man's turning from evil to good — from sin to holiness. You 
ask : " How is it known that there are sinners so great that 
God can not save them?" You, of course, mean without their 
consent or agency. I answer that I know it from what I wit- 
ness of the nature of men and of their necessarily being 
" workers together with God " in all the changes wrought in 
their moral character. 

You ask too : " How do you know that God tries to save all 
that He can ? " I answer that, to speak of nothing else. He is 
ever trying to save all men through the laws of their being — 
the operation of these laws being simply but ways in which God 
works. For instance. He is ever trying to turn the drunkards 
from their vice, by force of that law of their being which en- 
joins temperance. 

In answer to your reference to heaven, I say that, be they 
in heaven or on earth, God can not save from sinning those 
who persist in choosing to sin. Their choosing sin is sin. We 
are to praise God that, through what He has done for them, there 
are some on earth, who seldom, if ever, choose to sin : and we 
are to praise Him for the hope we may cherish that, in the life be- 
yond this, the influences against such an evil choice will be far 
stronger than they are here. We must not forget that God can, 
(to say nothing of other ways,) by changing the circumstances 
of the unrighteous man, and subjecting him to the sway of hap- 
pier influences, bring him to cease from choosing to sin. 

Your next head is as follows ; 



TO SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

" (3.) Your third solution is, that death is an advantage — a thing not to he 
regretted or mourned over, but to be rejoiced in as an arrangement of be- 
nevolence." 

I admit the cogency of the argument under this head, as well 
as the beauty and sublimity of the sentimetits. I do not know 
that I can add much to what in my Letter to you I said in de- 
fense of the position you here criticise. Before adding any 
thing, let me step aside to thank you for what you say so 
beautifully of the numberless worlds of the universe and of 
their being the successive homes of the righteous. 

Science, and fidehty to her teachings, may yet be carried so 
far as to leave man to suffer very little physical pain. In that 
day of far greater than our present knowledge of the laws of 
our nature and of corresponding obedience to them, sickness 
and premature deaths will be rare, and the body, worn for a 
hundred or a hundred and fifty years, will sink in a well-nigh 
painless death. You refer to instances of being " under slow 
torture, torn by wild beasts, burned at the stake." But you, 
certainly, do not believe that these sufferings are a part of the 
divine "arrangement." Tlaese, like most of our physical 
sufferings, result from human violations of the divine ar- 
rangement." 

What, however, if there shall always be a measure of suffer- 
ings on the earth ? They may be indispensable contributors to 
human improvement. The very "Captain of our Salvation" 
was made " perfect" through them. You would not have been 
as wise and useful as you are, had you not suffered in your own 
person, and in your sympathy with the sufferings of others. 
Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, whose exclusion from her pulpits 
would be very ludicrous, were it not very wicked, would not 
have been the eminently wise and lovely servant of God and 
man that he is, were not the world he lives in a world of " suf- 
ferers, death-beds, and grave yards." 

Perhaps there may be an endless succession of lives beyond 
this life, and pain in more than the first of them. In more than 
the first of them, pain may be not only a contributor to human 
improvement, but also to human happiness. Far am I from 
saying that this beneficent ofiice of pain will be needed in every 
stage of the future. I trust that man is to rise to heights where 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 71 

neither the suffering of pain, nor sympathy with it, will be need- 
ed for bis growth in knowledge, goodness, and happiness. 

Oh 1 why should you regard the sufferings of this life as dark 
and mysterious? If men would but listen to the voice of their 
nature and live rightly, certainly but a small share of these suf- 
ferings would remain. As to this small share, which men could, 
perhaps, neither prevent nor remove, and for which, therefore, 
God would himself be responsible, why should you not believe 
that lie has ordained it in wisdom and love, and for the promo- 
tion of human welfare? 

I notice how repeatedly you affirm that your theological creed 
has nothing to do with your gloomy and painful views of man's 
present miseries and of " the world of woe, filled with hosts to 
suffer forever." But, with all deference to your self-knowledge, 
I must believe it has much to do with them. All unconscious 
as you are of it, these views are, nevertheless, because of this 
creed. That " world of woe" is a fancy in your religion of au- 
thority, of which you would be quickly relieved were you to 
exchange that religion of fancies for the fact-religion of rea- 
son. 

" If but one beam of sober reason play, 
Lo ! fancy's fairy frost-work melts away !" 



LETTER lY. 

Continuing to comment on my positions, you begin your 
argument in this Letter as follows : 

" (4.) Your fourtli remark in explanation of the difficulties, or in attempting 
to remove tliem, is, that the representation that man is a great sinner, and is 
deserving of infinite punishment, tends to make men hate one another, and to 
judge men contrary to what God does." 

You do me the justice to quote in this connection nearly all 
my paragraph beginning with the words, " We ought not." 
This paragraph does not say that there are not great, and even 
very great, sinners on the earth. It sa3^s that " the exaggeration 
of the guilt or criminality of sin," and the preaching of such ex- 
aggeration, tend to sink us in each other's esteem ; to make us 
" monsters" in each other's sight; and to render us " coarse and 



72 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

cruel in our treatment of each other." You take issue with me 
and cite Jesus, Paul, Father of the Prodigal Son, Brainerd, 
Newton, Schwartz, and Yanderkempt as instances where men 
had great hatred of sin and yet loved the sinner. I do not 
know that any of them exaggerated human wickedness. But, 
allowing that they are, in some or other points of view, instan- 
ces to the contrary of my position, nevertheless, a general posi- 
tion such as mine is, is not to be disposed of by arguing against 
it from a few exceptional cases. You, surely, can not fail to agree 
with me that men's looking upon one another as hell-bound 
monsters of wickedness is unfavorable to their esteem of each 
other, and, as a general proposition, unfavorable to their kind 
and loving treatment of each other. This, is the way that the 
authority-religions teach men to look upon one another — and to 
do so not only in the case of enormous, outbreaking sins, but 
for a simple difference in respect to creed, ay, even in respect 
to a single dogma. Hence, the exterminating anger of the Jews 
— sparing from their wholesale murders not even women nor 
infants — and manufacturing for themselves, and, unhappily, be- 
queathing to Christians, but too willing to accept the bequest, a 
wrath-and-blood God. Hence, too, the slaughter of each other 
by Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians, and even where there were 
only the tweedledum and tweedledee differences between the 
Homoousians and Homoiousians. Hence, too, the Bartholomew 
Massacre. Hence, too, tbe Inquisition, with its hundreds of 
thousands of victims. Hence, too, the burning of Servetus by 
Calvin, and the approval of it by even the mild Melancthon. 
Hence, too, the burning of Joan of Kent by Cranmer. Hence, 
too, the burning of thousands of women for the imaginary sin 
of witchcraft, and a deep regret that a more tormenting death 
for such preeminent sinners could not be discovered. This au- 
thority-religion! this book-religion! this religion based on his- 
tory and tradition ! alas, how it has cursed mankind in all ages, 
and all around the world ! It claims to be the salt and savor 
of the world — but is its destroyer. Nothing but the civilization 
and power outside of this religion — oatside of the churches, 
holds back this religion and its churches from shedding blood to- 
day, even in England and America. Corner a Roman Catholic, 
and he will confess that all which Roman Catholicism lacks in 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 73 

order to compel conformity to herself, is the physical power to 
compel it. The breaking up of Protestantism into sects might 
possibly save, but it is all that could save, it from wielding phy- 
sical force after its ascendency was complete. When a Protes- 
tant informs me that he has burnt my writings against a religion 
of authority, don't I know that the spirit which prompted him 
is the very same spirit which, when and where the intolerance, 
of that rehgion is unrestrained, would swell into a demand for 
the burning of myself? Surely, the intolerant and merciless 
spirit of the Eoman Catholic Church — of that church, whose 
boast is that she changeth not — is not dead. It but sleepeth. 
Her Inquisition — her delight in the day of her unchecked pow- 
er — but sleepeth ; and nothing short of the progress of science 
can keep the bloody monster from waking. So, too, with the 
spirit of Protestantism, which is, as well as that of Roman Catholi- 
cism, the spirit of a religion of authority. This Protestant spirit, 
also, is not dead — it but sleepeth. Only give it the favoring 
circumstances, and the " time agreeing," which would be given 
to it, were the wheels of science and civilization to be turned 
back — and it would be found as capable as ever of generating 
auother Calvin to burn another man, and another Cranmer to 
burn another woman. A religion of authority, be it Catholic, 
Protestant, or Mohammedan, inasmuch as it renders its disciples 
entirely sure that they are entirely right, makes them always 
intolerant toward dissent, and bloodily so in a dark age and 
among an uncivilized people. The religion of reason, on the 
contrary, is tolerant and patient, because men are conscious that 
reason, mixed up as it is in the human breast with ignorance, 
prejudice, and passion, is not to be relied on as an entirely infal- 
lible guide. Imperfect human reason, sensible that it may mis- 
judge others, is not in haste to condemn and punish them. 

Do not think that I forget how charitable to all and how self- 
sacrificing for all are tens of thousands of the believers in a re- 
ligion of authority. The question is, not what they, now and 
here, are — but what would they have been had they not been 
in such circumstances and under such influences as serve to 
hold in check an essentially intolerant religion. 

I could leave the world more pleasantly, could I first see it 
delivered from the few crimes and vices against w^ich my life 



74 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

has earnestly, but quite too feebly, testified. How much more 
pleasantly, however, could I close my eyes upon it, were I first 
allowed to witness the overthrow of its authority-religions ! 
These religions will never rid the world of those crimes and vices. 
The religion of reason, with science for her helper, is to do that 
work. Alas these religions of authority, which shut out rea- 
son 1 Alas these superstitions, which ignore and defy science 1 
What floods of misery have ever been poured out upon all man- 
kind from these ever-overflowing fountains! 
You proceed: 

" (5.) Your fifth solution of the difficulty is, that science is doinor much to 
mitigate the evils referred to, and that it may be hoped that it will do much 
more — particularly that it may be hoped that it will materially prolong 
human life." 

And so you hope for no good in these respects from science ! 
— and, of course, the friends of science are not to have your 
help in their endeavor to extend its boundaries and blessings 
in this direction. How strange that you should believe that 
your theological creed has nothing to do with the matters in 
controversy between us 1 It is this creed which makes you 
hold that, let science attempt what improvement it may in these 
matters, it will attempt them in vain. Nay, so tight does this 
creed shut you up to a Book, as to make you believe that 
science can not change the limits of human life as they are 
given in that Book. If consistent, you can hardly believe that, 
should the people of a state observe, for a hundred successive 
centuries, the laws of life and health, their years would be 
more, or their health better, than if they should neglect such 
observance. 

You pronounce my expectation of good to the human family 
from science to be a " gratuitous supposition " ! And yet you 
speak of'Hhe/cro^ that Methuselah lived nearly a thousand years" ! 
You see no basis of fact for my expectation; but the extrava- 
gant fancy about the age of this antediluvian, of whose existence 
even there is no proof, you do not hesitate to call a ''^fact^ 

Paul was one of the learned and excellent men in his day. 
You are one of them in ours. Another resemblance between 
you is, that you both allow yourselves to be bound hand and foot 
by certain traditions. Of course, he would have repelled the at- 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 75 

tempts of science to reduce the pains of maternit}^, because, in 
his judgment^ such attempts would be derogatory to the 
divine decree, that these pains are the penalty for being " in 
the transgression." It is at the expense of your consistency, if 
you do not stand by his side at this point. So, too, consistency 
forbids your sympathizing with the endeavors of Harvey, 
Jenner, the Temperance Eeformers, the Dietetists, and many 
others to lengtlien the life of man — a Book having, in advance 
and for all time, determined its limits. 
You next say : 

" (G.) Your sixth statement is, tliat tlie grand remedy for the evils in the 
world is wealth." 

I was iinfortunate in using the word " wealth," since you sup- 
pose me to mean by it the riches of a rich man — the accumu- 
lation of much property in the hands of an individual. I am 
confident that, when writing the part of my Letter, which you 
here criticise, I never thought of a rich man. I no more used 
" wealth. " in the sense of large possessions of an individual, than 
did the author of the '' Wealth of Nations^'^ when putting this 
word in the title of his book. I referred to the general wealth 
of a people, of a nation, of the world. I referred to the masses, 
and to the importance of there being more property in the hands 
of the " toiling poor," that, thereby, they might not need to 
toil so much ; might have a large supply of material comforts, 
and greater advantages for enlightening their ignorance and 
escaping from their peace-destroying and shrivelling supersti- 
tions. 

You refer to the fall of the Eoman empire. I can not think 
that it was hastened by the great amount of its collective wealth, 
but rather by individual accumulations and the impoverish- 
ment of the masses. I am aware that philosophers have 
been wont to regard national poverty as more favorable than 
national riches to the virtue and w^elfare of the people ; the 
laws of Lycurgus against the circulation of the precious metals 
as more favorable to it than laws to the contrary. But an 
entirely opposite view is now coming to obtain. If a rich man 
is an evil, so is a poor one. Emphatically true is the Bible 
when it says: "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." 



76 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

Would that the prayer of Agur for '• neither riches nor poverty " 
were upon all lips ! 

Seldom do I look at a magnificent church or cathedral with- 
out thinking that the cost of them (hundreds of thousands in the 
one case, and, perhaps, even millions in the other) was wrung 
from the toiling poor — and that their sad return for what they 
could so ill spare from their penury was but to be sunk deeper in 
poverty and superstition, and to be more enslaved to the priest- 
hood. 

You close your fourth letter with stating and commenting 
on what you call my " seventh mode." 

You say : 

" (7.) Your seventh mode of meeting the difficulty is, that it may be hoped 
and expected that men will be in a more favorable condition in the future 
world than they are here, and that although the wicked may suffer there, 
yet there will be a better system of probation, so that all evil may come 
to an end." 

I do not see that, after what I have said in my Letter and thus 
far in my Kejoinder, bearing on this point, I need add any thing. 
I confess that you are right in saying to me : " You refer to no 
evidence or proof on the subject." I have none to refer to. I 
am as lame in this respect as you and all other men are. I know 
of no man who has, or ever had, " evidence or proof on the sub- 
ject." My supposition is, that our Heavenly Father would 
not have us occupied, while here, with this "subject." He 
knows that our earthly interests press their claims upon every 
moment of our brief earthly existence ; and, moreover, that, in 
a constant and hearty response to these claims, we are making our 
best preparation for another and a higher life. If, by means of 
a broken back or some other calamity, a man is forever laid aside 
from his earthly work, let him console himself and cheer his 
weary hours with sweet and sustaining thoughts of the heaven 
he longs to enter. But the man who is still competent to the 
tasks of this life — let him be absorbed in them, though ever 
aiming in them to glorify God and benefit and bless mankind. 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 77 



LETTER Y. 

You begin your argument in this Letter by examining, first, 
my "views of man ;" second, " my views of God." 

Pardon me for saying, that 3^ou attempt to make quite too 
much out of my words respecting the cooperation of the man 
with God in the work of turning him from his sins. I think 
that I have already shown your extravagance at this point. I 
was not aware that I am singular in holding to the necessity of 
such cooperation. Indeed, I supposed that Christians generally 
hold to it. It is true that, in my view of man, he can not be 
saved from sinning until he is first made willing to be saved 
from it. But, surely, there are innumerable ways, without sus- 
pending the laws of nature, and working miracles, and without 
reducing man to a machine, in which God can make him 
willing. " Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy 
power." All that you say about God's power being " ex- 
hausted," according to my theory, and about His ceasing to be 
" The Father Almighty," I can not forbear to regard as un- 
authorized by that theory. 

You are right. I do not believe in miracles and in occasional 
interruptions by God of what you call " fixed laws." You do. 
You believe that the constitution which He made for the world 
did not provide for eve • possible occurrence and exigency in it. 
On the contrary, I believe that it was made with that infinite 
and all-comprehensive foresight from which nothing, however 
distant or however small, can be hid ; that no part of it can 
ever need to be blocked, modified, or suspended, but that every 
part of it is steadil}^, unchangeably, eternally operative. You 
think that I limit God's power. I think that I magnify it by 
acknowledging the immutableness and sufiiciency of His laws, 
and that He is dishonored, instead of honored, by the theory 
of eking out His laws with miracles. Is it not rather you who 
limit God's power by your fancy that there are particular cases 
for which His laws do not provide, and for the relief of 
which miracles need to be performed? 

In the third place, you take up my " views of Christ." Be 
assured, my dear sir, that I appreciate the delicacy with which 
you deal with me at this point. But so accustomed am I to 



78 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

express my convictions at whatever expense to my reputation, 
that, hated as are my " views of Christ,'' I do not shrink from 
stating them, when, as now, there is an occasion which requires 
me to state tliem. 

It is as you apprehend — I do not believe in the Atonement. 
The reputed bargain between God and Jesus concerning the 
Atonement to be made by the one, and the recompense to be 
made by the other, is, I am aware, the most cherished and con- 
forting belief of millions of hearts. Nevertheless, as there is 
no proof of this bargain, which can, for even one moment, stand 
the test of the laws of evidence; and, moreover, as the Atone- 
ment finds nothing in nature analogous to itself, and nothing in 
our sense of natural justice to countenance it, or, indeed, that 
does not abhor it, so I am compelled to disbelieve that there 
was such a bargain, aud to let the Atonement drop. An inter- 
esting and widely credited story is that of the garden of Eden. 
To many this wondrous garden is an entirely certain and 
a very precious fact. To me, as there is no proof of its being 
a fact, it is only a groundless fancy. The speaking of 
Baalam's ass would be a very interesting fact in natural history, 
were it really a fact. 

That many of the earliest Christians should, by force of their 
Jewish education, be prepared to welcome this doctrine of an 
Atonement by Jesus, is but what might be expected. Their 
faith in an atoning animal sacrifice opened the way for their 
faith in an atoning human sacrifice. For instance, how entirely 
natural for John, a Jew, to say of Jesus : " Behold " — not the 
literal lamb, which taketh away the sin of a few, but — "Behold 
the lamh of God^ which taketh away the sin of the world!" 
Infinitely sad is it that this Jewish fancy respecting ani- 
mal sacrifices should have been allowed to fasten upon the 
Christian world this pernicious doctrine of an Atonement by 
Jesus. I call it a Jewish fancy — for it was made none the less 
such by the fact that the Jews were deluded into the belief that 
God ordained those sacrifices. By the way, it is quite probable 
tbat not a few of the most enlightened Jews believed that with 
sacrifices, so full of cruelty to the victims, and which, more- 
over, robbed the mouths of the poor, God had nothing to do but 
loathe them. A part even of the Epistle to the Hebrews (10 : 6) 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 79 

represents God to be displeased witli such sacrifices ; and Jere- 
miah has it (7 : 21,22) thatthej are ijeither Heaven-appointed 
nor Heaven-approved. I spoke of the Christian doctrine of 
Atonement as pernicious. Such must every doctrine be, which 
induces a reliance for the Divine acceptance on the character of 
another, instead of on our own character. The character of no 
other, not even of Jesus, can help us, in any degree or in any 
wise, except as the study of it serves to improve our own. The 
precious men, who are, perhaps, made better by their trust in an 
atoning sacrifice, though they may be quite numerous, consti- 
tute, nevertheless, but an exception. The mass, who depend 
upon such a sacrifice, do so at the cost of relaxing their morality 
and lowering their character. 

I need not say that you see I do not believe Jesus to be God. 
I believe him to be simply a man — nevertheless, a man " filled 
with all the fullness of God." I believe that all men should 
live " looking unto Jesus " — looking unto him as their greatest 
teacher, their greatest example, and their greatest saviour. Tak- 
ing him out of the category of men and deifying him, is not to 
help, but to harm mankind. In only a limited sense can God 
be an example to men ; but Jesus, being simply a man, teaches 
us the high moral and spiritual possibilities of our own man- 
hood, and thereby encourages us to cultivate a morality after 
the pattern of his own, which is the wisest, purest, sublimest 
ever taught on earth ; and which, also, encourages our en- 
deavors to live a life after the pattern of his, the loveliest life 
ever lived among men. The deification of Jesus, although so 
unreasonable, is, after all, not strange. It was common in 
ancient times to trace back the parentage of remarkable men to 
gods and goddesses. Then, to the Jews as well as to people of 
other religions, God was essentially a man. And why, if they 
made God to be a man, could they not as well make a man to 
be God? The transmutation one way is as easy as it is the 
other. Had the histories of Jesus been written in his day, or 
immediately after his death, the world would, probably, have 
been saved from the delusion of his deityship. For who in his 
day believed him to be God ? Not even his disciples. 

A long, long time, however, will it probably be before Jesus, 
relieved of the fancies and fictions in which superstition and 



80 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

craft have dressed him, will stand before all men as simply their 
brother, and in no wise their God. For by far the greater share 
of his disciples his Atonement is made the central doctrine of 
Christianity, and were his deityship surrendered, that doctrine 
would necessarily fall. 

I proceed to your next criticism. You were right in infer- 
ring that I am not certain that Jesus said any thing in the pre- 
cise words in which the histories of him state that he said it. 
Even the proofs that he lived can hardly be called perfect and 
conclusive. That he lived, and lived and died for the whole 
world, and was the noblest sacrifice ever offered upon the altar 
of humanity, I have no doubt. But the laws of evidence re- 
quire me to doubt whether pages written, no one knows when, 
nor where, nor by whom, and abounding in declarations ex- 
travagant and unnatural, contain, in any instance, the exact 
utterance of Jesus. I have no right to believe that the words 
ascribed by ancient historians to any man are the very words 
the man used. And why should I believe that the words of 
Jesus, not written until after they had floated for many years 
in uncertain and disagreeing memories, were, at last, written, 
word for word, j ust as they were spoken ? Of course, you would 
not yourself believe it, did you not assume that it was by mira- 
cles that all change and error in the case were prevented. 
But you are a logician, and you, therefore, know that it is for 
you to prove, and not for me to disprove, that there were such 
miracles. You orthodox men require more in these matters 
from us unorthodox men than is reasonable. You ought to be 
content with our admission that the New Testament report of 
the words and conduct of Jesus is, in the main, substantially 
correct. We could not admit so much as this in all cases,' 
particularly in the account of his treatment of the fig-tree and 
of the swine, and in the account of his anger in the temple. 

You are right, too, in inferring that I hold that " his recorded 
speeches in the New Testament are of no authority whatever." 
Nothing in the whole realm of morality is authority with me 
but what I do myself see or feel to be truth. I believe in the 
Sermon on the Mount, but not at all because it came from the 
lips of Jesus. I so readily believe in it, because it is so obvi- 



SECOND LETTEK TO ALBERT BARNES. 81 

ously true. Trutli so certain and truth so precious, at once, 
carry away captive botli my understanding and my heart. 

You close your remarks under the head of " my views of 
Christ," with the virtual inquiry whether I believe he perform- 
ed miracles. I have already, in answer to what you elsewhere 
say of miracles, declared my disbelief of them. I as well dis- 
believe that Jesus, as that any other person, ever performed 
a miracle. Keason teaches, and science confirms it, that all 
nature is under unchangeable laws, and that, hence, there was 
no room for a miracle, even at the hands of Jesus. Jesus had 
no power to perform a miracle ; God Himself has not, for He has 
no power to go against His own laws — in other words, to go 
against Himself. No security have His children, save in the 
certainty of His laws. He requires them to abide in His laws as 
their only safety. How unreasonable, then, to suppose that He 
can be guilty of the perfidy of introducing uncertainty into 
these laws ! Because men have told of Jesus' miracles, you 
would have men believe them. But there is no right to believe 
any thing upon the simple testimony of human lips. Such 
testimony must be rejected, unless nature and reason concur 
with it. 

But even if Jesus had possessed the power of working mir- 
acles, what occasion had he to exercise it? The supposable 
answer to this question is — That he might thereby prove the 
truth of his religion. But this religion is so simple as to need 
no proof. Jesus tells us that even ^* babes" can understand it. 
The Christ-religion has but one rule; and this rule, "Do as 
you would be done by," is so simple, that all can understand it, 
and so reasonable, that all can see its reasonableness. It is the 
priests, who created in the popular mind the sense of the neces- 
sity of miracles to prove that religion. They succeeded in 
doing this by putting in the place of the plain, matter-of-fact 
Christ-religion a large bundle of marvellous superstitions and 
unfathomable mysteries. 

You suppose that I look upon Jesus as guilty of deception 
and jugglery. I do not. I do not believe, with Renan, that 
Jesus entered into a collusion with Lazarus. I do not believe 
that he, whom I regard as the very personification of truth and. 
candor and dignity, ever attempted a miracle. 
6 



82 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES, 

You tliink that, in my mind, it is " wholly uncertain what 
became of Jesus." I am not at all uncertain as to what became 
of his body. I believe that, like every other man's dead body, 
it returned to dust. I trust that in him and in every other 
man there is a life, which lives forever. Between God's cha- 
racter, as revealed in nature, and man's character, there are not 
a few points of resemblance — ^not a few proofs that man is made 
in the Divine image, and that somewhat of God Himself is 
incarnated in man. Herein is one of my grounds for hoping 
that not only the human race, but the individual man also, is 
immortal. But do not infer, from what I have here said, that 
I regard a religion and a life as worthless, which do not promise 
immortality to the individual. Each of us should so love 
Humanity, should be living so emphatically for others, or, as 
Comte would say, ^^ poar autrui^^ as to be able to rejoice in the 
thought that the living-forever of the race infinitely over- 
balances the perishing of the individual. Eejoice, too, may the 
individual, in the thought that he can not wholly die. " Non 
omnis inoriar ^ He shall live forever in his race. Moreover, 
aside from this consideration of his continuing to live in his 
race, the individual has abundant reason to be thankful for his 
existence on the earth, and for the advantages it has afforded 
him for blessing himself, for blessing his fellows, and for honor- 
ing his Maker. 

I am aware it is deeply and widely feared that the tendency 
of the progress of science, which insists on fact-proof for what- 
ever it accepts, is to efface from the minds of men the doctrine 
of their immortality. But it may be that, in some way or by 
some means, science will yet prove the truth of the doctrine. 
Spiritualism, which claims, and not without reason, to be a 
science, is accumulating facts which, it trusts, will make it 
irresistibly evident that there is another life. 

You will ask me why, if Jesus performed no miracles, the 
New Testament should ascribe so many to him? I answer, 
that the books of every people, who believe in miracles, tell of 
miracles ; and that the books of those, who do not believe in 
them, do not tell of them. Such wares are taken to the market 
as the market calls for. The Gospels would have been dry and 
dull reading to those for whom they were written, had they not 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 83 

been interlarded and enlivened with miracles. I do not saj 
that the writers of the Gospels fabricated any of the miracles, 
or doubted the truth of any which they adopted. Eoman 
Catholics, believing that miracles do still occur, are,- ever and 
anon, startling the public ear with fresh ones. Protestants, on 
the other hand, believing that no miracles have been performed 
during the last eighteen hundred years, have no new miracles 
to tell of. 

Again, it is not as strange that the New Testament is stuffed 
with miracles as it is that, if these miracles did occur, other 
histories of that day, especially that of Josephus, should say 
nothing of them. Had Lazarus really been raised from the 
dead, the world would have rung with the wonder. The story 
of this resurrection may possibly have been started before the 
death of Jesus ; but it was quite too absurd to travel far until 
all, or nearly all, the witnesses for disproving it had passed 
away. It can be widely believed now, when there are none 
who had personal knowledge of its falseness ; but every 
enlightened man, in the day and locality of the alleged miracle, 
would have been ready to contradict it. 

I have often thought that, if there can be miracles, it were 
far better to have them performed for the purpose of teaching 
us how to cure physical than how to cure moral diseases. We 
need much light in regard to the former, but very little in re- 
gard to the latter. If I am a liar, or a drunkard, or a thief, I 
know the remedy. It is to stop lying, to stop drinking alcohol, 
and to stop stealing. So, too, do I know the remedy if I am a 
selfish, and thus, an irreligious man. I am to be benevolent 
and religious, by doing as I would be done by — a sublimity 
of justice, b}^ the way, of which I can not be capable without lov- 
ing Him, who has made me capable of it. But, if the cholera or 
yellow fever come upon me, I know not what to do. Then, if 
ever, I need miraculous enlightenment. 

You next take up my views of the Bible. In the main, 
you represent them correctly. Sometimes, however, j'ou 
partly fail to arrive at my meaning. For instance, I do not 
charge the Bible with being the occasion of all the wrongs done 
to Africa. (By the way, I have never called the Bible a Pro- 
Slavery Book. It abounds in emphatic testimonies against op- 



84 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

pression.) Nor would I say that it absolutely "prevents men, 
by its instructions and doctrines, from having just minds and 
loving hearts;" and very far am I from saying that "there is 
nothing certain about it." Its great principles and precepts 
are, certainly, right. It is rich in sentiments, which are certainly 
the most precious, that ever made their thrilling, melting migh- 
t}^ appeals to the human heart. 

You wonder that, finding so much fault as I do with the Bi- 
ble, I can, nevertheless, call it " the best of books." I would 
call it that, even if it contained nothing of value but its sketch 
of ^the wisest, grandest, loveliest man that ever walked the 
earth. But it elsewhere, also, contains instruction more valuable 
than is to be found in any other book. Your wondering that 
I regard a part of the Bible as good and a part as bad, .comes 
from your holding it to be but one book. Perhaps, no man 
ever did so much harm to Christendom as did he, who gave 
the name of " The Bible "— " The Book "— to this collection of 
Jewish writings, which are the product not only of many minds, 
but of many ages. You are certain, as well you may be, that a 
large part of it is good, very good. Then, from your belief of 
its oneness, comes your belief that it is all good, very gQod, and 
that, in some way or other — by some or other solution of the 
mysterious problem — even that part of it, which makes God 
command the wholesale murder of women and children, and 
that part of it, which tells of his putting one man's numerous 
wives into another man's bosom, are also good, very good. You, 
of course, admit that' it was at least a score or two of men who 
wrote the different parts of the Bible ; and that some of them 
lived in one age of the world and some in another. Neverthe- 
less, you accept the unity of the Book, because you accept the 
doctrine of the common inspiration of its writers. In your view, 
one and the same Spirit controlled them all ; and thus, in the 
most important sense, made of them all one man. I, too, believe 
in inspiration ; in Truth's inspiration. But, in my view, every 
man, of whatever land or times, is inspired in proportion to the 
goodness of his heart, to the nearness of his life to the Great 
Fountain of Truth — and in proportion, also, to the scope of his 
intellect. I love, too, to believe that the doctrine of "Divine 
Influences" is true; that they pervade the whole universe; 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 85 

and that all, who will open their hearts to them, will be blessed 
with them. But I do not know that the doctrine is true. Nor 
do I know that even the doctrine of "Divine Providence" is true. 
It, sometimes, occurs to me that, possibly, it may not be ; and that ■ 
God, having given His children their grand nature, has left 
them to use it and all other of nature connected with it, just as 
they will. I can imagine His telling them that, in their high 
faculties and the abundant materials for those faculties to work 
npon, He has given them enough to enable them to make a 
heaven, both within and around themselves ; and that it is 
most for their happiness and for His own honor that, in this 
life. He should help them no further. But, on the suppo- 
sition that this doctrine of *' Divine Providence," as gene- 
rally .understood, is not true, is there, in all this life, to 
be no answer to prayer? — no such help from God? In 
my remarks on your First Letter, I raised the question 
whether prayer and its answer are not among the everlast- 
ing and immutable laws. I will not so much as suppose, 
however faintly, such an exclusion of "Divine Providence" 
as shall exclude prayer. 

No more need be said in answer to the specifications in your 
Fifth Letter: and I have said as much of the Bible as need be 
said of it in connection with those specifications. I may say 
more of it hereafter. 

I have now reached the last of the nearly sixteen newspaper 
columns through which your Keply extends. I have read, and 
re-read, this final column. Its eloquence, beauty, gentleness, 
tenderness, and solemnity, all impress me ; and, I trust, that they 
may serve to bring me to more self-examination and to a more 
enlightened and faithful inquiry whether in these important 
matters which divide us, I am right or wrong. 

I see no evidence in this close of your Reply, that you cling 
less tenaciously to the position, that your great unhappiness 
springs, in no wise and in no degree, from your creed. Never- 
theless, that it does spring from your interpretation of the Bible 
is manifest. For whence, but from that interpretation, do you 
learn of " the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever "? 
And, clearly, your belief in that world is the great element in 
your great unhappiness. Then, the arguments, which you pile 



86 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

up against my counter creed-— are they not, also, mainly drawn 
from this interpretation ? Beyond all doubt, it is, chiefly because 
your creed accepts the absolute authority of the Bible, that you 
have no faith in my creed. I scarcely need add that your creed 
comes from this interpretation. But so surely as it does, so 
surely am I right in charging your "anguish of spirit" upon 
your creed. How, then, can it be otherwise than that your un- 
happiness comes from your creed ? 

It was to have you get rid of your great unhappiness, that I 
argued in my Letter, to which you have replied, the duty of 
your gi^^ng up the Bible as the basis of your religion. Can it 
be possible that our Heavenly Father drives us to the necessity 
of building our religion on a mass of old traditions and old his- 
tories ? I admit that, with all their errors, they serve valuable 
purposes. But, to regard them as fit to be the foundation of 
our religion — to depend upon them as certainly and entirely, 
true in a matter where certain and entire truth is of vital need 
— this all should see to be ruinously unwise. All intelligent 
persons are sensible of the great uncertainty of history. " His- 
tory is a lie " is one of the world-wide proverbs. Said Sir 
Eobert Walpole : " Do not read history to me, for that I Icnow 
must be false." 

How very slender are the external evidences of the truth of 
the Bible ! The internal evidences of the truth of much of it 
are, indeed, strong; but they are not stronger than are the inter- 
nal evidences of the falseness of portions of it. If it abounds 
in what is self-evidently true, so also it is not lacking in what 
is self-evidently ftdse. What more palpably absurd than are 
many of its absurdities ? What more flatly contradicts both 
physical and moral nature, than many of its statements ? It is 
said that we must believe the Bible to be all true and all of 
God, because of the fulfilment of its prophecies. But if such 
fulfilment verifies and honors parts of it, it does not follow that 
it has such effect upon the remainder of this book, which 
is, in fact, many books, the character of each of which is en- 
tirely independent of the character of most of the others. What 
certainty, however, have we that the prophecies were not writ- 
ten, or, in some respects modified, after the events ? And what 
certainty have we that the events are rightly interpreted to be 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 87 

tlie falfilment of the prophecies? As we have never seen that 
this foretelling gift belongs to the human constitution, but have 
ever seen tlie reverse, we should be very slow to believe that 
any man ever possessed it. Predictions, fulfilled only one 
time in a hundred, or only one time in a thousand, nevertheless 
pass with some marvel-loving and credulous ones for proof of 
the possession of this foretelling gift. But for persons of the 
stamp of the "Millerites" and ''Fifth Monarchy Men," little 
stress would have been laid upon these Bible prophecies. Such 
persons, limiting, as they do, the earthly existence of the human 
race to a few thousand years, very naturally pore upon these 
prophecies, and cluster upon a comparatively short period all, 
or nearly all, the fulfilling events. Dark days, falling stars, wars 
and wonders, are among these events. Not a few prying minds 
found fulfilment of Bible prophecies in our late war. They, 
however, who believe in the eternity of this earthly existence, 
would naturally believe that events which are to prove the 
truth of the Bible would be running all through that eternity. 
Another and influential reason, which is assigned for our be- 
lieving that the Bible is all of God, and is, therefore, all true, 
is our need of a book-revelation, in order that we may learn 
the true religion. But how much more reasonable is it for us 
to believe, and especially as we possess no evidence that we 
have such a revelation, that God has made us capable of dis- 
covering, without such help, the true religion — that, in a word, 
we need no other revelation than that which He has made in 
His Creation. Ko more in this than in other things has God 
given us a " royal road " to learning. He has not informed us, 
to the extent that we need to be informed, about Himself and 
ourselves, and thus superseded the necessity of our investigation 
and study. " It is the glory of God to conceal a thing ; but 
the honor of kings is to search out a matter." He has preferred 
to give us a being, in the exercise of whose great powers and 
faculties we can learn all we need to know in this life of our re- 
lations to Him and to each other, and of the duties growing out 
of these relations. How much nobler we may well suppose men 
can become, if left by their Creator to learn for themselves the 
true religion, its duties and applications, than they could possi- 
bly become if He had Himself unfolded all this knowledge 



88 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

to their lazy, in that case emphaticallj^ lazy, minds ! Would 
that the theologians believed this ! Say you that they do study 
out their religion and its requirements? I answer that the 
vast majority of them study gross superstitions and groundless 
traditions, and make these their stock in trade. How happy 
when science shall have swept Christendom of these superstitions 
and traditions, and shall thus have prepared the way for the 
study of religion, not in the fancies of men, but in the works of 
God! 

And another and influential reason, which is given, why it is 
our duty to believe that the Bible is all divine, and, hence, all 
perfect, is that all nations and peoples have similar beliefs in re- 
gard to the traditional facts respecting the Creation, Deluge, 
Earth, Heaven. But, allowing this to be so, and that astrono- 
my and geology have not turned these facts into fancies — never- 
theless, their far more numerous dissimilar beliefs regarding 
these fancy -facts do much more than balance the argument de- 
rived from those similar beliefs. Again, it is not strange that 
there should be those few similar beliefs, since, from the inter- 
course with each other of these peoples and nations, their creeds 
would be mutually modified, and would grow in resemblance 
to each other. 

The great thing to be first done for Christendom is to teach 
her what is the Bible ; how she came by this compilation ; 
and how absurd it is to make it the authority, or even any au- 
thority. This being done, she will know that to believe every 
word in that book is not the way to honor, but the most efiec- 
tive way to dishonor God. The Bible stands between God and 
His worshiping children. It must be taken out of the way, for 
it shockingly misrepresents Him, and squarely gives the lie to 
what is taught of Him in unerring nature — in books written 
by His own finger. In these books of nature He is seen to be 
a loving Father — but in parts of the Bible He is seen to be a 
malignant and raging hater of His children. 

When science shall have civilized Christendom, will the Bi- 
ble have lost its place? No, it will then have found it — for it 
will then stand modestly and fairly upon its merits, and not, 
as now, arrogantly and impudently upon its authority. Like 
other books, it will then be read with the unlimited right of dis- 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 89 

crimination. And let me, just here, venture the opinion that 
to postpone this right much longer, in the face of progressive 
science, will be to risk bringing the Bible into deep disfavor, 
and provoking, it may be, the rejection of the whole book. It 
has already become a very heavy tax upon the patience of an 
enlightened man, who has not swallowed the whole Bible, to see 
the priesthood requiring those parts of it, which are, some very 
foolish, some very absurd, and some very wicked, to be received 
as unqualifiedly and heartily as those parts, which abound in 
the highest wisdom, and in unequaled lessons of goodness. 
Such a man has no sympathy with the wretched policy of de- 
grading the Sermon on the Mount into moral oneness with com- 
mands to prosecute the meanest, most merciless, and murderous 
wars ; and no sympathy with the wretched policy of reducing 
the Bible law of entire purity to a level with the Bible license 
for concubinage. That this jumble should be called one book, 
and all its silly and disgusting parts should be held to be equally 
obligatory and authoritative with all its wise and precious ones, 
is, really, a gross insult to common sense, and a flagrant violation, 
not only of propriety, but of decency. 

And when the authority of the Bible shall be given up, will 
the God of the Bible be also given up ? Undoubtedly. They, 
who get their conceptions of God from all that is said of Him 
in the Bible, and they, who do not, have very different Gods. 
Mixed up in the Bible with the truest and highest views of God, 
are the falsest and lowest views of Him. It presents Him as 
being both infinite in power and limited in power ; as both wise 
and foolish ; both good and wicked ; changeable and unchange- 
able ; superhuman at one time, and of human infirmities at 
another. 

And when the God of the Bible shall be given up, will Chris- 
tendom go on without a God ? So far from it, she will then, 
for the first time, be in circumstances to advance freely and 
rapidly in the knowledge of the true God. Now, she is held 
back by her faith in the grotesque God of the Bible. Then, 
freed from that false faith, she will study the true God in His 
works far more than in traditions ; in His own Bibles far more 
than in man's ; in the certainties of nature, rather than in the 
records of miracles and the tales of superstition. Quite mani- 



90 SECOND LETTER TO ALBEllT BAENES. 

festlj, as we substantially said a little way back, it is His pur- 
pose that His children sball seek Him — "shall feel after Him 
and find Him." He could, it is true, have saved them this labor 
and delay, by more abundant and immediate revelations of Him- 
self to them. But He has left them to learn of Him by study, 
and, in this wise, has He left them to learn whatever it is very 
important for them to learn. The necessity of study in such a 
case is one of the laws of their being. 

I do not mean that every student of Nature aims to study 
God. A ra may have learned much of Nature — much, 
for instance, of astronomy and geology, and yet have expended 
very little thought on "Nature's God." But his learning has 
helped him to a larger knowledge of the laws of evidence; has 
helped him to clear his path of the rubbish of ignorance and 
superstition ; and has helped him to a fuller supply of the facts, 
which illustrate the wisdom, power, and goodness of God. 
Now, he is better prepared for the intelligent study of God — 
though he may still lack the heart for any study of Him. A 
man may have much science and but little sense of God. On 
the other hand, if scarcely a ray of science has reached him, he 
may, nevertheless, have a deep and sweet sense of God, largely 
mingled, however, as is most probable, with false and super- 
stitious views of Him. As we can not begin to build the firmly- 
founded house until the rock is cleared of its superincumbent 
earth, so also is there a preliminary work to be done, when we 
would build up a religion which shall be rational, and not mere- 
ly emotional ; permanent, instead of evanescent. This prelimi- 
nary work is the scattering by science of those fancies and fic- 
tions which ignorance and superstition work into spurious re- 
ligions, and are also able to mix with the true religion. Vast 
numbers under the ministry of that dear Schwartz, to whom 
you refer, gave their hearts to God — but, by reason of their ig- 
norance (enforced by oppression) almost all traces of his surpris- 
ingly successful labors had disappeared, in a generation or two. 

If I recollect, Mr. Wasson, who, a few years, ago visited some 
parts of Greenland, came to the conclusion that the people of so 
rigorous a climate are too shrunken in intellect to grasp, and be 
established in, the true religion. 

Since I reject the Bible as the basis of religion, you will in- 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 91 

quire what I bold to be its basis. I answer that Nature, and 
Nature only, is. You build 3^our religion on the Bible. I 
would build mine on Nature ; and avail myself of every help, 
and especially of the Bible, in building it. You make the Bi- 
ble, the'whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, your authority. 
Nature only would I have to be mine. Ably and faithfully 
have you testified against slavery. But should you come to in- 
terpret so much as one line of the Bible to be for slavery — 1 do 
not say that you would, then, stand forth for slavery — but I do 
say that if you did not, you would be utterly inconsistent. It 
is possible that I, too, may yet be for slavery — but it will not be 
until I see Nature to be for it. 

Alas! that you should be of the great number, who call the 
Bible — that mixture of good and evil — " God's word. " Brought 
up, as I was, to believe in the whole Bible, T, too, until middle- 
life, often called it by that name. But I, now, see that I sinned 
in doing so — ay, that I insulted Grod in doing so. I, too, help- 
ed inculcate tEe Bible as an authority. But, now, I see that I 
sinned in telling my fellow-men that they are bound by the bad 
as well as by the good parts of it — the false as well as by the true. 

My very simple theory of religion (and I must think that it 
is as just and sufficient as it is simple) is to treat all beings, 
whether God, man, or brute, in the way, not that a man-made 
and fallible book calls for, but that unerring Nature calls for. 
To illustrate this theory — I see you to be my fellow-man, and to 
have, therefore, essential rights and interests like my own. It 
follows that I am to be as regardful of these rights and interests 
as of my own — of you as of myself All this is, of course, to 
be reciprocated by you. And then how plain it is that both 
of us in the light of the high being, which our Common 
Father has given us, and in grateful return for it, are to 
love Him supremely ! Here, in these few lines, you have 
my theory of religion. It is the theory of the natural - 
ligion. Yours is the theory of a conventional religion. You 
believe that Jesus taught a conventional religion. I believe 
he taught the natural one. His injunction to love and bless our 
enemies he drew straight from Nature — from the fact that heat 
and light are given to both the evil and the good, and rain to 
both the just and the unjust. He, virtually, teaches that such 



92 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

impartial and generous goodness on our part, as we see in Na- 
ture, will make us to be the children of our Father in heaven : 
nay, that it will not only make us to resemble Him, but to be 
perfect even as He is perfect. So, too, does he draw straight 
from Nature the reason for his injunction not to be anxious con- 
cerning the supplies of our wants. He instances the ravens, 
who, though " they neither sow nor reap, neither have storehouse 
nor barn," are, nevertheless, fed; and, as a proof that we need 
not be anxious about our clothing, he reminds us that the lilies, 
though they "toil not and spin not," are, nevertheless, more 
splendidly arrayed than was " Solomon in all his glory." 

I said that Jesus taught the natural religion. He was pre- 
eminently a child of Nature. How familiar he was with her 
is proved by the frequent and beautiful illustrations he drew 
from her. Eenan, although so wrongful to Jesus in some re- 
spects, does justice to him in describing his love of Nature and 
the natural simplicity and beauty of his character. Peculiarly 
and surpassingly fit expositor of the religion Sf Nature was 
Jesus! And where else could have been found a so peculiarly 
and surpassingly unfit expositor of a conventional and unnatural 
religion ? 

How sure is the basis of the religion of Nature! How un- 
sure is the basis of every other religion ! Trueness to the laws 
of our being — trueness to all Nature — this, and this only, is the 
one rational religion. How greatly the popular Christianity 
mistakes itself! Its exclusive and conceited spirit looks down 
contemptuously upon all other religions, and never suspects how 
much it resembles the most of them. This popular Christianity 
is not, as is believed by its disciples, an altogether peculiar tribu- 
tary to the broad stream of religious history. Its waters are not 
so unlike those into which it flows. It is not a new thing. It 
is but a continuation of the past. There are, indeed, a few re- 
spects in which it is an improvement upon the past. 1st. Its 
mythological part is not so large nor extravagant as was that of 
the religions which preceded it. 2d. Its principles and precepts 
are far superior to theirs. 3d. Its great Incarnation (Jesus) is, 
incomparably, more attractive than such Incarnations as Krish- 
na and Vishnu, and the Incarnations of other religions. 

You think that you and I are too old to undergo much change 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 93 

in our religion. You are mistaken. I desire, and expect, to 
keep on changing in mine — and I am somewhat older than you. 
It is not because of your age, but because you have, unhappily, 
shut yourself up to a religion of authority, that it is not probable 
you will change. It is only within the limits of this religion that 
you allow you reason to play. On the other hand, my religion 
has no sacred nor frowning boundaries, which stop my reason, 
and forbid it to cross into other and unexplored fields. 

Your part in this Correspondence will be approved by the 
vast majority of its readers, and mine will only afford tliem fresh 
reason for denouncing me as an " Infidel." Nevertheless, I feel 
that a no-very-distant posterity will forsake jour side, and come 
to mine. The battle between science and superstition has now 
fairly begun — and superstition is constantly losing ground. 
The disappearance of the great religions, which are, also, the 
great superstitions, is but a question of time. The Mohamme- 
dan believes that his religion will endure forever; and doubtless, 
its death is far distant, since far distant is the day when Moham- 
medan countries will be enlightened by science. The Hindoo 
foresees no end to his religion. Nevertheless, this too, though 
it may be many generations hence, will have to encounter the 
irresistible progress of science. Nor does Christendom believe 
that her religion is ever to die. Least of all is she aware that 
it is even now death-struck. Science has already riddled it: 
and astronomers and geologists keep on punching holes through 
it, as if it were no longer a sacred thing. But it is not mainly 
by proving the falseness of this, that, and another part of a super- 
stitious religious system — not mainly by thus honey-combing it — 
that the system must fall. Far more effective to this end is the 
influence of science to train the people to require proof — down- 
right fact-proof — of the truth of what they are called on to be- 
lieve. Before such a requirement such a system can not stand 
always. Science has done good in exposing the nonsense in 
the religion of Christendom respecting the Creation, Deluge, Ked 
Sea, Sun, Moon, etc. But it has done more in bringing millions 
into the habit of demanding evidence of the truth of every part 
of that religion. Science has taught them the laws of evidence, 
and to insist on applying them to all claims to their credence. 
It is very true, and sadly true, that demagogues do much, by 



94 SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. 

their impositions upon the popular credulity, to unfit the peo- 
ple to reason, and to require adequate proof before believing. 
But immeasurably more to this bad end does the priesthood. 
To train a people to gulp down such stories as the Fish Story, 
and the Story of the power of Elijah's prayer over the rains of 
all the earth, is, in effect, to train them to gulp down any thing 
and every thing; to confound the wildest fancies with facts, and 
the most extravagant falsehoods with truth. It is, in a word, 
to spoil them. 

I said that the great religions are all to disappear. Protest- 
antism believes that Catholicism is to pass away — but that she 
herself will stand. The reverse, however, is more nearly true. 
Protestantism, being less bound up in a religion of authority than 
Catholicism, will be the first to break up. Some of its disciples 
will go one way, and some another. Most of the Protestants 
will espouse the Religion of Reason or Nature ; and many of 
the remainder, including especially the ritualists, and all such, 
as love to stand with adoring and dreamy faces toward the 
benighted past, will join themselves to the Eoman Catholics. 
To Reason or to Rome. It is said that we should believe in 
the resurrection and other miracles of Jesus because some (I 
apprehend very few) wise and learned men of that day believed 
in them. I answer that even the wise and learned of that day 
had, necessarily, but a very imperfect knowledge of the laws of 
evidence, so far as they apply to Nature and the God of Nature. 
An extensive knowledge of them was hardly compatible with 
their belief that the earth was the chief thing in the universe, 
and all else but its servants; and what we, at the present day, 
see to be the action of general laws, was now special blessings 
and now special cursings. Modern science, sweeping aside 
ignorance and superstition, makes room for studying the laws 
of evidence. A superstitious people are credulous, and delight 
in the marvellous. Indeed, the more marvellous a thing is, 
the more eager are they to let their credulity be abused by it. 
Science stops all this ; and causes facts, instead of fancies, to rule 
men. 

My argument is ended. At almost all of the numerous points 
raised by you, I had, necessarily, to make it very brief. In the 
years 1866 and 1867, 1 published a couple of pamphlets : entitled 



SECOND LETTER TO ALBERT BARNES. Uo 

TJie Theologies and Kature^s Tlieology^ in wliicli I examined some 
of these points at greater lengtli. Permit me to ask jou to read 
these pamphlets and to regard them as an Appendix or Supple- 
ment to this Letter.* 

Ere closing this Letter, let me confess that, all the way in writ- 
ing it, as also all the way in writing my former Letter to you, I 
have been not a little embarrassed by the apprehension of my 
moral incompetence to arraign your religious errors. The con- 
trast of my own feebly-religious life with your eminent life of love 
to God and love to man, has been ever before me. Then, too, I 
could not forbear apprehending that, if I look so unfavorably 
upon myself for having taken this liberty with you, others will 
look still more unfavorably upon me for it. Li their eyes, this 
liberty will be like to savor far more of conceit than of modesty, 
if not, indeed, far more of hypocrisy than of sincerity. 

Let me assure you that wherever, in these Letters, I have 
argued the superiority of my religion to yours, I have not 
had the least reference to our religious life or personal re- 
ligion, but exclusive reference to the comparative merits of our 
theories of religion. I need not say that a man's experienced 
or actual religion is not, necessarily, identical with his theory 
of religion. It may be far better, it may be far worse than that 
theory. Confident as I am that my theory, rather than yours, 
is the just one, I, nevertheless, can not deny that it finds more 
approval in the conclusions of my understanding, than in the 
experience and state of my affections, or in my outward life. 
That this is so, tells not against my creed, but against myself; 
tells not that my religious theory is wrong, but that I am not re- 
ligious enough to conform my practice to it. And, now, as the 
heart is more than the head, I trust that I shall not be accused, 
on the one hand, of exalting myself, or, on the other, of disparag- 
ing you, by ending this Letter with the opinion that, taking 
into view both our personal religion and our theological sys- 
tems, my head is in advance of my heart, and your heart is in 
advance of your head. 

With great regard, your friend, 

Gerkit Smith. 

* See Appendix, pp. 99 and 125. 



APPENDIX. 



THE THEOLOGIES. 
NATURE THE BASIS OF A TRUE THEOLOGY. 



THE THEOLOGIES. 



BY GERRIT SiTITH. 

That tlie living theologies will all fall into ttie tomb of the 
long-ago-dead ones, and will, like Greek and Eoman mythology 
be remembered but to illustrate superstition, to adorn a speech 
OT enliven a page, is wbat no one should doubt. This is to be 
the fate not only of the rude and unsystematized theologies, 
which stand in the traditions of the barbarous and illiterate, 
but also of the widely-prevailing theological systems that are 
found, or claimed to be found, in the Bible, the Koran, and the 
other authoritative '' Sacred Books." Whilst, however, we are 
sure that, i q the progress of science and civilization, these heavi- 
est of ail ihe curses of earth will pass away, we nevertheless 
Lave abundant reason to fear that this joyful event will not be 
until after still more of long and weary ages. That the theolo- 
gies are this preeminent infliction on the human family is but 
too obviously true. They do more than all things else to dark- 
en life, to shut out sweet sunshine from the soul, to fill it with 
trembling apprehension, and to sink it in agony and despair. 
Who but the Hindoo himself can tell what the Hindoo suffers 
from his horror of transmigration and from other horrors in- 
spired by his theology ? Does the Bible man suffer much less ? 
As a general thing, he does. But it is not mainly because his 
theology is much less terrific — for it is not. It is mainly be- 
cause, his intelligence being greater, his faith is less absolute 
and absorbing. Moreover, a considerable share of the Bible 
men flatter themselves that, by means of their technical or 
magic change, they will escape the common doom. The pro- 
portion of Hindoos who expect to escape it is probably far 
less. But the pain inflicted by the theologies is not all. What 
can more debase and shrivel the soul, as well as distress it, than 



100 APPENDIX. 

this ''fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation 
whicli shall devour the adversaries ?" — than this belief not only 
of living all one's life here and hereafter, but even of being 
Z>orn, under "the wrath of God?" 

It is, indeed, encouraging to see so many of the wise and 
good at work to reform and improve the theologies. But far 
more encouraging is it to see others of this class at work to 
abolish them. Nothing of these hideous structures, which have 
for so many centuries cast their baleful shadows over the whole 
earth, should be left standing. There are, we confess, many 
great and precious truths scattered through these theologies. 
Nevertheless, nothing of all the superstitiously and cunningly- 
devised systems which contain them ; not one shred of all the 
fabrics of fancy and fraud into which they are woven ; nor of 
all the black pictures, broad caricatures, and abominable mis- 
representations of God and man, which these theologies have 
imposed upon the credulity of their disciples, should be suf- 
fered to survive. We do not deny that these theologies can be 
somewhat reformed and improved. But they can not be made 
harmless, nor even less than mighty for evil, except by anni- 
hilating them. 

That these theologies are not soon to disappear should, in- 
stead of being allowed to discourage us, but serve to make us 
more impatient to have the right and effectual blows struck 
at them. They, who are only pruning their branches, should 
be wielding axes upon their roots. They, who are at work to 
make them better, should be at work to overturn them from 
their lowest foundations. Some of these would, for conscience' 
sake, retain the theological systems, were they but modified 
here and there. Others, however, of these superficial workers, 
would be glad to be more thorough, could they believe that 
they would thereby hasten the overthrow of these systems. 
They would thereby hasten it. Going for a whole truth is 
more effective than going for a part of one — the whole one 
being the more obvious, the more commanding of approbation, 
and, every way, the more powerful and influential. On this 
principle the public mind is far better prepared for th^ entire 
flinging away than for the partial retention of the theologies. 

But why am I so utterly intolerant of the theologies ? It is 



APPENDIX. 101 

chiefly because tliey not only stand in the way of religion, but 
are so confounded with it, as to be taken for it. The bloody 
worship of Juggernaut is religion in one part of the world. In 
another, belief in the marvels told by and of Mohammed is reli- 
gion ; and in another, belief in the unrivaled fish story, and 
that Balaam's ass did actually speak. This illustrates the power 
of the theologies to usurp the place of religion, and pass them- 
selves off for it. Koman Catholicism allowed her theology to 
carry her so far away from religion, as to involve her in the 
measureless guilt of setting up the Inquisition. So, too, it was 
letting their theology become their religion, that led Eoman 
Catholics and Protestants to the wholesale slaughter of each 
other. A few words in the Bible respecting a curse belched 
forth by a drunken man have been the justification of large 
portions of Christendom for sinking tens of millions of Africans 
in the pit of slavery. It is true that the Greeks and Romans 
were slaveholders, and that it was not because they had an au- 
thoritative " Sacred Book " to sanction it — for they did not 
have it. But it must be remembered that with them slavery 
was intended to be a step forward in humanity and civilization. 
' It was consenting to let prisoners of war live. A few words in 
the Bible have sufiiced to sink woman from her natural equal- 
ity with man into his inferior and servant. She is beginning 
to complain of the extensive denial of her civil and the entire 
denial of her political rights. But in vain her complaint, so 
long as the theologies are an admitted authority. The first 
thing for woman to do toward regaining her freedom, is to free 
herself from the power of the theologies. This is the fountain- 
head of her oppressions. She will never succeed in throwing 
off her multiplied wrongs so long as she consents to let this 
great authoritative wrong, which lies back of them, and pro- 
duces them, continue to exist. So long as it exists, she can 
gain but little by summoning to her help the pleas of reason 
and nature ; for even reason and nature are powerless in the 
presence of a hostile and admitted authority. In proceeding 
under this head, I need not particularize the wars which have 
come from the theologies. I need not refer to the rivers of 
blood which have flowed from contentions about a single theo- 
logical dogma — that, for instance, regarding the grade of 



102 APPENDIX. 

Christ's being. Gifted, learnedj admired individuals have, as 
well as the masses, fallen under the misleadiog influences, and 
sometimes under the infernal swaj, of these theologies. By- 
giving the reins to theology instead of religion, the very intel- 
lectual and very conscientious Jonathan Edwards became a se- 
vere and persistent slaveholder. In this wise, too, the perhaps 
no less intellectual and conscientious Calvin consented to the 
burning of Servetus. In this connection, let me remark that 
the conscientious theologian, who makes his theology his reli- 
gion, is the most striking of all the instances in which con- 
science, instead of restraining from crime, impels to it. An 
unconscientious man may have a creed, but he is comparatively 
unconcerned to enforce it. Beware, however, of the consci- 
entious man whose judgment is perverted, and who is tempted 
to intolerance and persecution ! Especially beware of the 
conscientious man, who makes one of these false theologies his 
religion ! For both his theology and his moral sense — in other 
words, his idol and his conscience — command him to be unre- 
lenting. Nor are the theologies, as the unreflecting might sup- 
pose, confined to their especial channels. Everywhere they 
overflow their banks. Everywhere they mingle their dark 
and turbid waters with, the bright and gladdening streams of 
life. All our affections and all our affairs are exposed to their 
poisonous and perverting influences. The natural and there- 
fore healthy loves and hates are modified and made morbid by 
these unnatural and monstrous theologies. Even Government 
itself is still called on to look to them as its authority, and to 
let them shape its policies and prompt its conduct. Amongst 
the noticeable recent instances of this are the sermons of Dr. 
Booth, of New- York, and Dr. Hall, of Northampton, in which 
our Government is virtually advised to look into a theology, 
especially into the doctrine of the atonement, for light and guid- 
ance in regard to its disposition of the Southern rebels. With 
such clergymen the paramount question is not what natural 
justice, but what theological justice, calls for — not what reason, 
but what the Book they assume to be revelation demands. 
And here let me say, that there is but one hope that the theol- 
ogies, so long as they shall be authority in the Church, will not 
again rule in our civil courts and civil councils, as they once 



APPENDIX. 103 

did in a portion of our country. This hope is, that the counter- 
action outside of the Church will continue to be superior to the 
forces within it. Very true is it that the Church does, in many 
respects, benefit the world. But no less true is it that the 
world needs to protect itself from the Church ; and that the 
protection will continue to be vitally needed so long as the the- 
ologies shall, by her recognition of their authority, make the 
Church a source of frightful peril to the world. Eemembfer 
that Matthew Hale administered the law of witchcraft— the 
very witchcraft which the great and good but superstitious 
John "Wesley made belief in to be essential to belief in the 
Bible.* Let the Church again get the upper-hand of the world, 
and jurists as pure and wise as even Matthew Ilale will admin- 
ister the absurd laws of absurd theology. Nay, in that event, 
as bloody horrors as ever theology-inspired law-makers and 
•judges were guilty of, will be perpetrated. This will be so, 
however, only as long as the Church shall continue to let the- 
ology stand in the place of religion. She will become a rich 
and unqualified blessing to the world just so soon as her reli- 
gion shall cast out her theology. That the danger of our own 
Grovernment's falling under theological sway is not yet past, is 
manifest from the present endeavor of very numerous theolo- 
gians to get the Federal Constitution into their hands. To 
embody in that Paper some leading theological dogma — such, 
for instance, as that Jesus Christ is the ruler of nations — would, 
in the light of its broadening results, be a calamity, perhaps 
more to be deplored than our great rebellion. 

I have spoken of these theologies as authoritative. It is true 
that they are not so, certainly not always so, upon the great 
ecclesiastical leaders. The Luthers, Swedenborgs, and other of 
these leaders stretch and shorten and shape them as they will. 
But the masses, on whom the theologies, however modified, are 
absolutely binding, have no appeal from them ; no right to in- 
quire into their claims to credence ; no right to cast so much as 
one doubt upon those claims. 

What I am writing will give offense, not only because it 
throws into one category all the theologies, but because, in 
doing so, it also throws into one category all the '• Sacred 
Books " from which it is claimed they are derived — ^the Bible 

* What multitudes have been burnt or otherwise put to death, because of the wicked line in 
the Bible : " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live !"— Read Lecky on Rationalism. 



104 APPENDIX. 

as well as the Koran and the others. Are there not, however, 
respects enough in which these Books resemble each other, to 
justify the classing of them together for the purposes of my ar- 
gument ? The theologies drawn from them all are absurd and 
monstrous. The Books are all lacking in the amount of evi- 
dence necessary to establish their authenticity and genuineness. 
They all have but slender external evidences of the truth of 
their contents — so very slender that nothing in any of them 
should be received as certain truth, but what carries in itself 
the evidence that it is truth. Whilst the Sermon on the 
Mount is intrinsically and manifestly true — the truth of it 
shining by its own light — there is not only nothing in the ordi- 
nary histories and narratives of the Bible to make it certain 
that they are true, but next to nothing in the outward proofs 
and collateral testimonies to this end. In the case of its extra- 
ordinary histories and narratives, especially those which em- 
body miracles, there, of course, lie both these objections to cre- 
dibility and the additional one of the inherent improbability, 
not to say, in some instances, inherent impossibility, of the 
things related. And yet, strange to say, the miracles of the 
Bible are cited to prove the truth of the Bible, as well as their 
being in the Bible to prove the truth of themselves. But, how- 
ever true the miracles, they can answer for themselves only — 
not for the other parts of the Bible. So, too, the prophecies, 
which also are claimed to prove the truth of the Bible, and in 
turn to be proved by the Bible, can, in no event, do more than 
prove themselves. "Were the Bible one book, instead of scores 
of books of widely different ages stitched together — ^the produc- 
tion of one mind instead of many minds — there would be some 
plausibility in the claim, that one part of it goes to prove an- 
other. As it is, the claim is simply and utterly absurd. This 
vicious circular reasoning, which, in the present instance, allows 
naked assumptions to prove each other, would equally allow 
each in a company of detected rogues to swear his companions 
clear. 

The simple fact is, that we have no moral right to believe the 
whole of the Bible. The man, who believes every thing in it 
to be true, believes it, not in obedience to the laws of evidence, 
which are also the laws of his being, and therefore the laws of 



APPENDIX. 105 

Ms God, but in defiance of them. He believes it, not ration- 
ally, but superstitiously ; not because of what it is, but because 
it is in the Bible. 

Have I made a poor book of the Bible ? I have not meant 
to do so ; for, although there are things in it which are foolish ; 
and things in it which physical science shows to be false ; and 
things in it condemned by moral science also-^I, nevertheless, 
hold it to be the best book in the world. That it contains our 
earliest record of the words of the wisest, holiest, sublimest 
man that ever lived, is of itself enough to give it the preemi- 
nence amongst all books. Second, however, only to the words 
of Jesus, are the best words of the prophets and apostles, who 
speak to us in this book. But how can I know that Jesus was, 
if I do not know that all the Bible is true ? I admit that I do 
not certainly know when nor where he was bom, nor what 
was his name. But that such a man lived is proved by his 
words — words such as no other man had equaled. Is it said 
that they were the words of some other person ? I answer that 
then this other person was himself the Jesus, and was only too 
modest or discreet to own it. He, from whom the wondrous 
words came — whenever he was, wherever he was, whoever he 
was, whatever his name — was the true Jesus. "We assure our- 
selves that Jesus existed much in the way that we assure our- 
selves of the existence of some other very eminent person of 
the past. It is not from the scanty and uncertain materials 
which make up his biography that we are sure Shakespeare 
lived. But, in the light of certain compositions, which are evi- 
dently the coinage of the same brain, we are sure that there 
did live — we can not tell precisely when nor where, nor even 
know we under what name — an unequaled dramatic writer. 
Shakespeare is no myth : and by similar reasoning Jesus is no 
myth. 

I have spoken highly of the Bible. That it abounds in the 
intensest national egotism and in the intensest national scorn 
and hatred, and in the falsest views of God, is only what might 
be expected from the narrow vision of most of its writers, and 
>f the people to whom they belonged. For, remember, that 
the Jews regarded the earth as a plane of but a few thousand 
miles in circumference ; the sun, moon, and stars as but candles 



106 APPENDIX. 

for it ; and tlie one work of God to love and care for them, and 
to hate and destroy their neighbors. Alas ! our folly in let- 
ting a people so ignorant and so mistaken make up our Bible ! 
If we must have a Bible — that is, a binding ^' Sacred Book " — 
how much more rational to let the advanced physical and 
moral science of modern times furnish it I How irrational to 
turn our back upon the great light of the present, and to keep 
our face toward the thick darkness of the past ! 

With all its faults, the Bible, were it allowed to take its 
chance with other books, and be judged, as they are, simply by 
its merits, would be a blessing above all price. But so long as 
it is imposed upon us as an authority, and our faith in one part 
of it required to be as full as in every other — as unquestioning in 
the story of the standing still of the sun and moon as in the 
wisest words of Jesus — ^so long will it be like to do more harm 
than good. So long as the Bible is held to be a finality ; a Pro- 
crustean bed to lop off and deter progress ; a stereotyped and 
unchangeable religion — so long must it be of very evil influence 
upon those by whom it is thus held, and so long will they be 
liable to be prejudiced against it, who regard nothing as too 
good to be under the law of growth and progress, and nothing 
as so good that, in an age of great and general improvement, 
it can not become better. 

By this time my readers may be ready to ask me, how we 
can learn religion, if neither the theologies, nor the "Sacred 
Books " from which they are derived, can be depended upon as 
infallible teachers? I answer, that we are to learn it just as we 
learn all other things — by the action of the understanding upon 
facts. Until we take this only way to learn it, superstition will 
continue to usurp the place of religion, and the miseries, which 
ever attend upon the one, will continue to shut out the blessed- 
ness which is ever united with the other. After saying this, I 
scarcely need add, that I do not regard religion as a mystery. 
I mean by it the knowledge of our duties and the discharge of 
them. In the last year (1865) has appeared in our country a 
very eloquent and brilliant book, a leading idea in which is 
that the understanding can not discover religion, and that it is 
by means of a spiritual intuition or some faculty other than the 
understanding that religion can be discovered. Is not a similar 



APPENDIX. 107 

ideji found in the pages of Schleiermaclier, and in the beautiful 
Quaker fancy of the " inner light ?" No wonder that the author 
of this book saj^s : "Religion needs mystery, and can not exist 
without it." But no theologies, that are lai^gely made up of 
imagination and mystery — not even the refined theology of the 
book in question — can stand the increasingly severe tests of 
advancing science. A matter-of-fact theology — a theology, 
which, instead of cherishing mysteries, tends to dispel them — 
is the only one that can stand these tests. With the least pos- 
sible delay then should the nations get rid of the existing theo- 
logies, and set up in their stead a rational and scientific expla- 
nation of religion. To postpone this duty is to postpone the 
day when religion shall rest on a sure foundation — on the rock 
of facts. It is to leave religion, which shou.ld ever be recognized 
as founded in and identified with unmistakable nature, to be 
confounded with speculations upon the supernatural, and dreams 
of the unknown. 

I spoke of the necessity of learning religion from facts. But 
may they not be the facts of history ? — of the Bible and other 
books? No, the facts even of modern histories, and even of 
our own enlightened times, are quite too uncertain to be confi- 
dently adopted even by the philosopher or statesman. How 
emphatically too uncertain, then, for the foundation of religion 
— (a foundation which needs to be the surest of all sure things) — 
must be the facts of those ancient histories, such as the Bible, 
written in unscientific and superstitious ages, and stuffed with 
grotesque and absurd myths and legends ! Of all mistakes the 
most fatal is to take up with a historical religion. Even if it 
were the pure and true religion, when it came into the stream 
of history, what right have we to flatter ourselves that it has 
not, long since, become a corrupt and false one ? For what 
is there which that stream leaves as it found it? Nay, what is 
there which even begins its historical character in its entirely 
true character? Sui'ely, God has not left us to get our religion 
from a source so uncertain and so corrupt as history. 

What, then, are the facts by its right action on which the 
understanding can discover religion? They are the earth and 
what — man preeminently included — pertains to it, with so much 
of the surrounding skies and worlds as science bungs within 



108 APPENDIX. 

our knowledge. But are here data enough from which to learn 
religion? If not enough, they are, however, all we have. But 
they are enough. From them we can learn, amongst other 
things, our relations and duties to our fellow-men. And if we 
do not choose to stop here with the disciples of Comte, and to 
worship nothing higher than Humanity, we can go on to learn 
from the same data our relations and duties to Grod. Here is 
enough from which to infer the wisdom, power, and goodness of 
Him from whom have come the earth and the sky. And in 
this power, wisdom, and goodness, there is enough to teach 
us what love, gratitude, and worship we owe Him. It is em- 
phatically true as the poet teaches, that we can look "through 
nature up to nature's God." He is known by Plis works. 

" If such the sweetness of the streams, 
What must the fountain be !" 

In this wise the studious and right-hearted can not fail to 
know "much of Him, and to commune with Him. My under- 
standing, which has convinced me of the qualities of my neigh- 
bor, has also convinced me of what I owe him. In like manner 
are my convictions of the character of God followed by my con- 
victions of what I owe God. But, although we can learn much 
of God from His works — much of the supernatural from the 
natural — I, nevertheless, would refrain from going to super- 
naturalism for the solution of religious problems. We need not 
go to it, because nature is sufSicient to this end ; and we should 
not go to it because supernaturalism is but an inference, and 
inferences from inferences are to be more or less distrusted — at 
least, in matters of great moment. 

Nature alone is the standpoint and standard in human reason- 
ings. All admit it is in all things but religion. They should 
admit it is in that also. Nothing is more natural than love, 
which is so emphatically the chief exercise of religion that Paul 
resolves religion into the loving of one's neighbor as himself. 
But this is only loving naturally. For what can be more 
natural than to love, even as we love ourself, him who has 
rights and interests like to and equal to our own ? To be re- 
ligious, then, is simply to be natural. That a man, perplexed 
with problems in mathematics and mechanics, should invoke 



APPENDIX. 109 

supernatural knowledge would not be the strangest of things. 
Bat as well might we look above the nature of water to learn 
that its law is to run down hill, as to look above human nature 
to learn that religion or love is its law. The germs of religion, 
and the faculties for maturing and unfolding them, so far from 
being foreign to our nature, are born with us, and are, as much 
as our muscles, a part of our nature. The water may get 
dammed up and turned backward. So a man may pervert his 
nature, and stifle his love and the other affections of religion, 
and sink himself in selfishness. But if he will return to his 
nature, these affections will again be in exercise. He will again 
love ; and, if he become entirely natural, he will love his neigh- 
bor even as himself. 

I have now indicated the only true foundation of the only 
true religion. It is palpable, certaiu facts. Do I number Grod's 
Spirit amongst these facts ? I do not — for I am not certain 
that it is amongst them. I believe it is. I believe that it, as 
much as matter, is a part of the eternal constitution of nature. 
I believe it pervades the universe ; that all men can receive of 
it ; and that its power is such as to work in him, who opens 
wide his mind and heart to it, a change so great as to be com- 
parable to a new birth, and a resulting b!essedness, which Jesus 
well calls "The Kingdom of God." I believe, too, that this 
being "born again," be it in this or in any coming stage of our 
existence, is the only door into this Kingdom. I speak less con- 
fidently of this regenerating power, because I speak from obser- 
vation instead of experience ; and can only say that I believe I 
have, in here and there a beautiful and sublime life, seen strong 
proof of it. Jesus was sure of the reality of this power; and 
he was sure of it because he felt that he had the witness of it in 
himself. But whether they be few or many who have experi- 
enced this power, certain it is that vast numbers have, from 
what has passed in their own bosoms, been sure, not only that 
God is a Spirit, but that he gives his Spirit to the children of 
men. Yes, I believe in this Divine gift, and that it is by its 
help that men have hitherto made so great progress, and will 
hereafter make so much greater, in the knowledge of Divine 
things. 

And here, too, I may be asked whether I number God's 



110 APPENDIX. 

providence amongst these fundamental facts of religion. I 
answer tliat, on the one hand, I do, if His providence means His 
constant energizing of His laws, and His constant and changeless 
working through these constant and changeless laws ; and that, 
on the other hand, I do not, if it means that He occasionally 
overturns them, and plants special providences upon their ruins. 
Such providences may bring present relief to this man, and 
temporary benefit to that man ; but if they are at the expense 
of the steady operation of the great laws adapted to mankind, 
they must be at the expense of mankind. Moreover, what can 
be worse for men than their habit of presumptuous reliance on 
special providences to deliver them from the straits to which 
their folly and rashness have reduced them, and to save them 
in their sin of violating the laws of their being ? 

So, also, I may be asked whether I give "immortality" a 
place amongst these fundamental facts. I do not — for I am not 
certain that man is immortal. The arguments in favor of it, 
which, on one occasion and another I have made, satisfied my- 
self. But neither did they satisfy all my hearers and readers, 
nor produce in myself the sense of entire certainty. But do I 
hold that men can love and worship God without being assured 
of their immortality ? Certainly I do. So majestic is this being 
which He has given to ns ; so rich in its endowments ; so large 
in its capacities for holiness, happiness, and usefulness, that even 
though we were sure it ends with this life, there would still re- 
main abundant reason why we should love Him with the whole 
heart, and serve and honor Him with all our powers. Abundant, 
too, would be our reason for rejoicing with the " Positivist," 
that the individual man, though ceasing to exist, shall, never- 
theless, live in his race. And, surely, if the " Positivist" caa 
live for others {pour autrui) and worship humanity, we, with 
our more comprehensive faith, can also live for others, and 
worship the God of Humanity. 

And what of Eternal Punishment ? Do I place that amongst 
the facts on which Religion rests? I answer that I believe 
in no God-inflicted punishment. Punishment in the next 
life there doubtless will be; and I know not but it will, in 
some instances, be eternal. It will, however, be all self-inflicted. 
That is, it will all grow out of the character and conduct of the 



APPENDIX. Ill 

sufferer ; and if that character and conduct can be bad forever, 
then must he suffer forever. 

Alas, that Christendom went to the Jewish theology for her 
apprehensions and knowledge of God ! — to that theology which 
teaches that he is but a big man ! — the subject of human changes 
and caprices, now melted into sorrow, and now maddened into 
fury I Alas, that she did not go straight to ISTature, to God's 
own works and ways, for there she would have learned that He 
is our Friend and Father ; that He is never angry with even the 
worst of us ; that He curses none, and blesses all who will let 
Him bless them 1 With what agonizing earnestness are men 
seeking the Divine forgiveness of their sins ! But, surely, it is 
in no common sense of the word, that God forgives His child- 
ren. He has kept no account against them, and there is there- 
fore nothing for Him to forgive. He but loves and pities all 
who are in the bondage of sin ; and He never ceases to hold out 
His delivering hand to them. Dear Morris Ketchum did not 
render due honor to the state of his own heart, when he told 
his unfortunate son that he forgave him. For the words might 
imply that there could have been a case in which he would not 
have forgiven him. But no such case could have been present- 
ed to such a father's heart. How much less would the Great 
Father be unforgiving to his child — even to his worst child ! 
Nay, the petition for His forgiveness, if offered in the common 
acceptation of the word, wrongs and dishonors Him. 

The Old Testament, because abounding in these horrible 
views of God, has, notwithstanding the precious and sublime 
truths scattered through it, wrought immeasurable misery and 
debasement wherever ignorance and superstition have acknow- 
ledged its authority ; and even the 'New Testament is not so 
clear of these views as to leave its value half what it would 
have been without them. The Apostles were not entirely rid 
of them : and even in some of the words ascribed to Jesus, 
an indorsement of these views is not entirely wanting. But^ 
whilst it is improbable that we have a large share of his best 
sayings, it is also improbable that he said all which is credited 
to him. "Words entirely out of harmony with his general 
utterances and general character we should be unwilling to be- 
lieve to be his words. And do I, then, make it simply a question 



112 APPENDIX. 

of human reason what of Jesus to believe, and what not ? I 
do. And nothing can be more unreasonable than to bow to his- 
tory with all the submission due to mathematical certainties. 
History has been said to be a lie ; and what history is there so 
entirely free from falsehoods as to be able to look this saying 
full in the face ? 

By the way, this doctrine of Eternal Punishment is sustained 
mainly by one word, which is ascribed, no one knows whether 
rightly or wrongly, to Jesus — a word, moreover, that has come 
down to us through no one knows how many translations, and 
with what changes, therefore, of its sense ; for scholars no more 
agree what language it was originally recorded in, than they do 
as to the number of the previous years in which it was a mere 
tradition, and was, as well as its context, subject to the uncer- 
tainties and variations of a mere tradition. 

Is the Devil one of the facts on which the true religion rests ? 
He is not. He is a mere myth. Nevertheless, no actual being 
has grown so fast as has this purely imaginary one. He has 
grown from a principle into a person ; from a servant of God 
into a rival of God ; from a force in the physical world into a 
co-ruler in the spiritual. In the earliest notices of the Devil, or 
rather of the germs of the Devil, he is but the principle of evil. 
Then he rises into an agent of evil — only, however, in the exter- 
nal world. For it was many ages before the ancients came to 
recognize a power for evil, or even a power for good, in the 
moral world. They saw the goodness of God only in the sun- 
shine and rain, and other welcome phenomena of nature. They 
saw the malignity of the Devil only in the tornado and light- 
ning and other destructive agencies of nature. But, during 
the last two or three thousand years, and especially in Christen- 
dom, the Devil has become a power in the moral and spiritual 
world — a greater actual power than even God Himself — with 
millions of followers where God has but hundreds. The only 
relief under his present sway is the promise that it shall have 
an end. But when that end is to com.e no mortal knows. 

To the honor of the early Jews, there was no Devil in their 
theology. The Jews, who were carried to Babylon, appear to 
have learned and believed somewhat of him during their cap- 
tivity. The early Jews needed no Devil, for they believed in 



APPENDIX, 113 

no Hell — no Hell, as the word is now popularly understood. 
The first Christians, had they drawn their creed from the Old 
Testament and old Jewish theology only, would have had iu it 
neither Hell nor Devil. But they evidently blended with that 
theology Greek and Roman mythology. Even Christ himself 
gave proof of this. For the parable of the rich man and Laza- 
rus is evidently constructed upon the classical mythological idea 
of the future life. According to this idea, only a river or gulf 
separates the blessed from the tormented. But, although it is 
impassable, it is not so wide as to prevent conversation between 
them. 

That Christendom, with all its increasing liglit, should still 
believe in the Devil is, indeed, a very remarkable fact. It 
shows how mighty is the ecclesiastical power. Not to believe 
in the Devil would be not to believe in Hell; and tbe Devil 
and Hell are the foundation on which that power rests. Knock 
away this foundation, and the orthodox theology must fall, and 
also the churches built upon it. By the way, how much such 
forcible preachers as Jonathan Edwards and Nathaniel Emmons 
must have done to confirm and spread the most horrific ideas 
of Hell and the Devil ! How many tens of thousands have 
been made wretched through life by their pictures of the tor- 
ments of the damned and of the delights of the blessed in those 
torments ! Emmons is careful to add that, in some instances, 
their delights will be in the torments " of their own children, 
parents, husbands, wives, and friends." No wonder that the 
childhood of dear Horace Mann was made miserable by the ser- 
mons he heard from the lips of Emmons ! 

Nevertheless, this modern faith in the Devil is a great im- 
provement upon that ancient faith from which the Devil was 
omitted. The hypothesis of a Devil is a great relief to the 
character of the theological God. If there is a Devil's work to 
do, then by all means let there be a Devil to do it. Do not let 
God's hands be dirtied and bloodied by it. 

The theologies have a Devil's work to do; and therefore 
they have a Devil. Gratefully and gladly do I turn away from 
them to the religion of reason — a religion in which there is no 
Hell, no Devil, no oo-ruler with God, no malignant rival of the 
loving Father. 



114 APPENDIX. 

Whether I make belief in the Trinity fundamental to a true 
religious faith, may be another inquiry. A three-headed ser- 
pent is a disgusting and abhorrent monster. So is a three- 
headed Grod. And what less than this is the Trinity, which is 
found in so many theologies? Why need we suppose that 
there are three persons in God? To explain what phenomena 
is this supposition necessary ? What attributes or sympathies 
does the Great Father lack which makes it necessary to assume 
the existence of another Deity ; or, if the expression be pre- 
ferred, another person in the Godhead? How derogatory to 
Him is tlie hypothesis that there is not in Him all that is need- 
ed in God I — that if, for instance, He have the father's wisdom 
and strength, He nevertheless lacks the mother's tenderness and 
love! 

Alas ! how much the world has lost by the deifying of 
Christ! Tliis incomparably best of all the specimens of man- 
hood might ere this, had he been left in his manhood, have 
become the chosen and cited example of all the races of men. 
But by the lifting of him up out of manhood into Godhood, 
he comparatively ceases to be an example. On the supposition 
tliat he is God, his words and deeds, matchlessly sublime as 
many of them are, excite in us comparatively little interest and 
no wonder. But that they are the words and deeds of a mere 
man awakens all our admiration, and encourages us with the 
hope that we too, if we shall earnestly endeavor to live the 
Christ-life, will be enabled to speak Christ-words, and do 
Christ-deeds. That they are merely human words and human 
deeds proves what possibilities of wisdom and goodness lie in- 
folded in human nature ; and that these possibilities were so 
developed in the life of one man is an example to inspire their 
development in the life of every other man. The theological 
view of Christ, by putting him hopelessly beyond human imi- 
tation, makes him well-nigh useless as our example. 

That Jesus was both claimed and believed to be a God is 
not strange. The usage of thus accounting for and thus honor- 
ing extraordinary gifts and marked eminence had not yet 
ceased. The Greeks and Komans had long been wont to deify 
their idolized heroes and philosophers. The story of Christ's 
conception is but a substantial repetition of the story of Plato's. 



APPENDIX. 116 

I saj that the deification of Christ and of thousands of others 
is not strange. But that the ignorant past should have power 
to drag down the enlightened present into this exceedingly low 
superstition is, indeed, strange. 

Jesus is called the Incarnate God. Bat God has incarnated 
Himself in all men. So inherent and structural is He in them, 
that they are well said to be made in His image I It is true 
that, whilst some men are so spiritual as to be ever filling 
themselves with God, others are so depraved as to be ever 
emptying themselves of Him. Nevertheless, all men are made 
to be receptacles of God ; and it is but their own fault if they 
are not filled with Him. That one so filled with the Divine 
Spirit as was Jesus, should feel and even declare himself to be 
one with God, is not to be wondered at. We too, were we so 
filled with it, would, probably, not think it presumptuous to 
feel and claim this oneness. 

The fact that Jesus was so immeasurably above his fellow- 
men is often turned into a defiant argument for his Deityship 
by those who deny that such a fact could occur in the course 
of providence. There is, however, manj^ a wondrous effect, 
the causes of which are hidden from us, but which we, never- 
theless, do not doubt are causes in the course of providence. 
A wondrous effect, all the providential causes of which we are 
very far from knowing, was three such cotemporaries, in 
one little island, as Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton. Each of 
them was in his own way an unsurpassed genius. Jesus was a 
genius in morals ; and, as such, stands without a rival. I have 
often thought, when inquiring into the causes of his preemi- 
nence, how highly probable it is that the conditions of a true 
marriage, and for the production of a pure, sublime, and God- 
like offspring, met remarkably in the parents of Jesus. The 
Catholic Church has, indeed, no little show of reason for claim- 
ing that Mary was immaculate ; and no less would it have for 
the like claim in behalf of Joseph. 

The next inquiry may be whether I put the Atonement 
amongst the things on which the true religion is built. Most 
emphatically not. This doctrine, that "without shedding of 
blood is no remission," and that with it there is — a doctrine 
which has come down to us through so many Pagan channels — 



116 APPENDIX. 

is quite too flatly in tlie face of nature and reason to find fa vol 
with those who feel themselves bound to bring all things to 
the tests of nature and reason. That every man must suffer 
for his own sins, be they against his physical or moral consti- 
tution, and that no other one can relieve him of the scars and 
consequences, is a truth lying quite too deep in nature and rea- 
son to be subverted by any thing to the contrary — least of all, 
by what is so uncertain as history, and so absurd as the theo- 
logies. 

Furthermore, I can not believe in the Atonement, because I 
can not believe in any one of the three things, belief in all of 
which is essential to belief in it. 

1st. I can not believe that God, in whose great loving heart 
there is nothing to be appeased, instituted those bloody sacri- 
fices in which the doctrine of tbe Atonement is founded. It 
was mistaken and cruel Pagan superstition which instituted 
them. Alas! how mistaken in supposing God to be the enemy 
of the wicked, when their enemy is themselves, and He is their 
fjiend ! — in supposing Him to pour out curses upon the wicked, 
when it is they who curse themselves, and He is working to 
witlihold them from the self-infliction! And, alas! how cruel 
those abominable sacrifices which doomed the innocent animal 
to a premature slaughter, and wasted the food which belonged 
to the hungry poor ! 

2d. I do not believe that the Father bas provided an eter- 
nal hell, nor, indeed, any bell for His children. Whatever 
hell they find here or hereafter, they make for themselves. He 
makes only heavens for them ; and if they do not enter them, 
it is only because they will not. 

3d. I do not believe that Christ is God. But, according to 
the theory of the Atonement, it requires the sacrifice of God to 
save sinners from an eternal hell. And here, by the way, we 
have another instance of the theological circular reasoning. 
The sacrificed God proves the eternal hell, and the eternity of 
the punishment proves that there could be no less sacrifice. 

Whilst I do not believe that Christ's death has taken away 
the sin of any, be they believers or unbelievers in Him, I do, 
however, believe that He died for all. And I further believe 
that, by looking habitually and lovingly unto Him — unto this 



APPENDIX. 117 

preeminent Son and best representative of his Father — we come 
to hate the sins which he hated and to love the virtues which 
he loved. In a word, we come to love him and be like him, 
and to find that, through his teachings and examples, he has 
become our savior. 

I pass on to speak of Prophecy. Do I believe it to be one 
of the necessary facts in the true religion ? I do not believe it 
to be a fact at all. 1st. I do not know but the ancient proph- 
ecy was after the event. 2d. I do not know that the event 
was the very thing foretold. 3d. I do not know but the 
prophecy was generally the discernment of mere human fore- 
sight, instead of the inspired foretelling gift — which prophecy 
is claimed to be. As the modern world has never seen a 
prophet — a technical and inspired prophet — it should be very 
slow to believe that there ever was or, indeed, ever will be one. 
It is said that departed spirits can prophesy through us. I do 
not know how that is. But that men in the flesh have this gift 
or inspiration requires proof. 

And now to the Miracles. Is faith in them essential to a true 
religious faith ? For one, I believe that there never was, and 
that there never will be, a miracle — that is, an arrest or suspen- 
sion of the laws of nature. And I not only believe in, but I 
am content with, the never-failing constancy of those laws. I 
would let water remain water always, though there are many 
who rejoice in the fancy that, for once, it was turned into wine. 
Her seals of death, wherever nature places them, I would leave 
honored and unbroken. But there are many who, desiring an 
occasional triumph over her, even at this point, would have her 
now and then thrust aside, and her dead men called to life. 

I do not believe in miracles, for I have never seen any, and I 
know no man who says he has seen any. Persons are reported 
to have seen the Bible miracles, but I know neither them nor 
their reporters, nor how far any of them are entitled to confi- 
dence. What array, however, of human testimony should suf- 
fice to convince me of the truth of miracles ? — of the truth of the 
claim that nature does sometimes escape from the control of her 
own laws ? ^N'owhere in the world of facts — not in astronomy, 
nor in geology, nor elsewhere — is there the slightest proof of 
such escape. On the other hand, what is less to be relied on 



118 APPENDIX. 

than human testimony ? — often deceiving others and often itself 
deceived ? So, the least which can be said is, that if miracles 
were ever necessary to authenticate religion, they are necessary 
now. Nay, in that case, the perpetual performance of them is 
a necessity. Another reason why I object to belief in physical 
miracles is, that it opens the door for belief in moral miracles — 
for belief in the variation, and even the reversal, of the fanda- 
mental rules of morality. Denying that the body can die, or 
that when dead, it must remain dead, can consistently be fol- 
lowed by denying that, ''the soul that sinneth, it shall die." 
In other words, to deny certainty to nature in her moral laws 
is no less unreasonable than to deny it to her in her physical 
laws. Another objection to believing in the miracles is, that it 
virtually denies our capacity to learn the truth, which we need 
to learn, and which we were, therefore, made to learn. And 
such believing is to be objected to, not only because it is dero- 
gatory to the high powers of human nature, but because it im- 
plies that God is driven to violate His laws, in order to correct 
the blunder He fell into in His work of constructing it. 

I notice, of late, that the more cultivated of those who cling 
to the Bible miracles resort, in increasing numbers, to an expe- 
dient for saving themselves from indorsing the monstrous and 
even blasphemous absurdity that God is, now and then, guilty 
of violating His own laws, in order to get Himself out of an oc- 
casional pinch. But they only make bad worse. " They jump 
out of the frying-pan into the fire." Their expedient is to call 
the miracles but seeming, instead of real, violations of the fixed 
laws of the universe. They take the ground that the perform- 
ers of the miracles had only more knowledge of these laws than 
the ignorant spectators had ; and that the miracles, whilst ap- 
pearing to the spectators to go counter to the laws, were, never- 
theless, really concurrent with them. But this solution of the 
difl&culty makes the performers, including Jesus himself, im- 
postors, for they all knew that the wonders which they are said 
to have wrought, were fraught with conviction solely because 
the spectators believed that they were wrought in the very face 
of nature and against her laws and forces. Manifestly, the 
performers intended this belief, and rested their success upon it. 
Surely, if it were only by his superior knowledge of the laws 



APPENDIX. 119 

and forces of nature that Jesus turned the water into wine, the 
spectators, if they knew this to be so, would not, because of 
that knowledge and its wondrous products, have regarded him 
as God, or even as having a special commission from God. 
The}' would have regarded him as more learned than them- 
selves — that is all. 

Do I regard '' Total Depravity " as one of the facts not to be 
omitted in making up the true religion ? It is not a fact. It 
is but a doctrine. In a depravity which comes of a bad life, I, 
of course, believe. Perhaps it is quite reasonable to believe in 
an inborn depravity also. For if it is true that a parent can 
transmit his diseased physical constitution, why can he not 
transmit his depraved moral one also? But beside that the 
moral one is, probably, not, in any instance, totally depraved, 
this transmission of character from generation to generation is 
not what the believers in "Total Depravity" have in view 
when advocating it. With them the depravity is simply a de- 
duction from the fancied " Fall of Man " in the fancied Garden 
of Eden. Nevertheless, this doctrine is much more than a 
fancy. It is an essential part of a horrible creed — of a theory 
which freezes and subdues by its matchless terrors. We have 
seen that the Atonement and the Eternal Hell are doctrines 
made for the purpose of fitting them into each other. Also, in 
constructing the doctrine of " Total Depravity " was mutual 
support aimed at. It fits into both the others, and they fit 
into it. 

Do I hold that a religion to be sound, must comprise rites and 
ceremonies ? I do not. I have, necessarily, lost my interest in 
these by losing my interest in the theologies. I know a little 
church, which gathers every other month around a table to 
commemorate the love of Christ. The bread is broken and the 
nnintoxicating wine is poured and passed by one and another, 
women as well as men, and this ceremony is not because of its 
intrinsic value, but because it affords a surpassingly suitable 
occasion for conversing about Christ, his life and death, his 
principles, spirit, and aims. Prayer and singing are intermin- 
gled with the conversation, and the hour spent in this wise is 
■y^lt to be a profitable as well as a pleasant season. 
■^ A few words in this connection regarding the Sabbath. It 



120 APPENDIX. 

may be right to give it up. It may be right to make the 
first day of the week a rest-day. But to say that the first day 
is the Sabbath is absurd ; and to say that the Bible teaches that 
the Sabbath is transferred from the seventh to the first day is 
either delusion or disingenuousness. The simple truth is, that 
such transfer was a concession to very unworthy considerations. 
The conscientious and consistent Seventh-Day Baptists and some 
others cling to the Sabbath. They do so because they cling to 
the Bible — the whole Bible. 

I pass on to say that, whilst the theological religion is a facti- 
tious as well as a fictitious religion, made up as well as false, 
the true religion is identified with nature and reason. It is ow- 
ing to this distinction that, whilst the true religion obeys the 
law of progress, the theological religion prides itself in its un- 
changeableness ; and that whilst the one lives in the present, 
the other burrows in the past. How boastful, for instance, is 
Eoman Catholicism (and Protestantism is scarcely less so) of be- 
ing, in this age of light, precisely what it was hundreds of 
years ago ! In view of this fact, it is, of course, not at all 
strange that the theological churches oppose Ee forms until 
they begin to be popular. And here we see why it is that the 
orthodox are obliged to contend for every line in the Bible. 
Instead of choosing the religion of nature and reason — a religion 
which they could trustingly and calmly leave to nature and 
reason to sustain — they have chosen a conventional and artifi- 
cial religion, which is to be sustained by a body of external 
evidence. That body is the Bible, and, therefore, to give up a 
line of the Bible would be to suffer a breach — a perhaps fatal 
breach — in the evidence of the truth of their religion. 

I need say no more in condemnation of the theologies. If 
the best of them— those which, to the dishonor of Christ, are 
called the Christian theologies — are, in the main, such bundles 
of naked assumptions and gross fallacies, any farther argument 
against them must be quite superfluous. 

Why is it that men persist in believing in these preposterous 
theologies ? It is, first, because they are trained, and this too 
by means of these theologies, to believe that they have need of 
a direct revelation from their God of their moral duties ; and, 
second, because these theologies are at hand to impose on their 



APPENDIX. 121 

credulity, and to proffer themselves as the supply of this need. 
But all the analogies in the case deny that they have such need. 
Men have no revelation to teach them how to build a ship or 
railroad, or cure a bodily disease. God has given them the 
fiiculties and opportunities for learning how ; and so, too, has 
He given them the faculties and opportunities, nothing more, 
for learning their moral duties. It should be added that these 
moral duties are far more easily learned than are the workman- 
ship and cure referred to. Even childhood is capable of com- 
prehending all that is essential in the one. But it requires a 
studious and laborious manhood to perform the other. It is 
often said that God would not leave us without specific and re- 
vealed instruction in theology. But He has so left us in the 
case of geology, astronomy, physiology, and, indeed, all things 
else. In every branch of knowledge, study, and toil, and not 
ignorant, indolent receptiveness, is the condition of needful 
progress. 

Great stress is laid on the importance of having our know- 
ledge in the sphere of morals and religion attain to certainty, 
and hence the argument for a direct revelation of the things of 
that sphere. But the mistake which lies at the bottom of all 
this is the underrating of human powers and human dignity. 
It is not man, but beings of an inferior grade, that need certain- 
ty in their knowledge. The beaver and the bee have it in their 
sure instincts. But man's high faculties supersede the necessity 
as well of instinctive as of revealed certainty. It is true that, 
instead of setting out in life, as does the brute, with all the 
knowledge he needs, he is to labor for it throughout his life. 
But it is also true that, with the help of those high faculties, he 
can labor successfully for it. He requires not the sure guid- 
ance of either instinct or revelation. Enough for him is it that, 
by means of those faculties, he can be ever approaching cer- 
tainty. " The glorious uncertainty of the law," not in an ironi- 
cal sense only, has become a proverb. But more glorious are 
the uncertainties in sublime moral and religious truth, through 
which man must ever be working his way up toward the dis- 
tant and perhaps never attainable goal of entire certainty. 
Lessing was right in holding that it is the pursuit more than 
""^^e possession of truth which ennobles and glorifies man. 



122 APPENDIX. 

But it is said that it is only by revelation that we can acquire 
certain knowledge of the life to come. "Why, however, should 
we desire this certain knowledge, or, indeed, any knowledge of 
the life to come ? Should we not have so much faith in God 
as to believe with the whole heart that, when we reach that life, 
we shall find it just such an one as we need ? — a life of joy to 
the righteous and of improving discipline to the wicked ? More- 
over, have we, whilst in the earthly life, more than time enough 
to learn the things which belong to it? But must we not, 
whilst here, prepare for the next life ? — and to this end 
do we not need a revelation of the things of that life ? No. 
Whilst here, we are to live for this life; and that is our best 
and, indeed, our only w^ay to prepare for the next. There are 
many who are habitually leaping over the duties of this life 
into the heaven thej'' dream of and are impatient for. So, too, 
there are many wdio are unfitted for these duties by the hell 
they dread. But both classes should be absorbed in these 
duties, and then they would find a heaven, in this life, and be in 
no danger of finding a hell in another. He is wise and safe 
who toils to rid the earth of the hell there is upon earth, and to 
make, right here and even now, the " new heaven and new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

I must close. A sad thing is it that men are bound up in 
these theologies. But a sadder thing is the so faint prospect 
that they will very soon be unbound. The good cling to the 
theologies for conscience' and also for salvation's sake ; and it is 
but justice to admit that the great mass of the good believe in 
the theologies. The bad cling to them because, it being for 
their interest to go with the good, they will ever do so when 
they can do so cheaply. Moreover, a large share of them hope 
that by such clinging they will have a better chance to get to 
heaven. The bare fact that a man has received his theology 
on Divine authority makes his giving it up well-nigh hopeless. 
The door is shut against all argument, and whoever would pre- 
sume to attempt to open it is guilty of the bold blasphemy of 
bringing forward mere human reasonings against God's unerring 
word. Even judges and statesmen will consent to let me argue 
before them. They, of course, see the flaws in my arguments. 
But, as they are conscious of the fallibility of human reasonings, 



APPENDIX. 123 

tbeir own not excepted, tliey hear me kindly and respectfully. 
But I always notice that these orthodox theologians, who fancy 
that they have a *' Thus saith tlie Lord " for their convictions, 
refuse me the hearing ear. From the proud eminence of their 
conscious infallibility they look down upon me with pity and 
scorn, and sometimes with manifest anger. They let me know, 
if not alwaj^s by words, nevertheless by look and manner, that 
it does not become a man to argue against God. 

How numerous and powerful the institutions and agencies 
for upholding the theologies and prolonging their existence ! 
Not to look beyond our own country — see the scores of thou- 
sands of churches, whose life is in the theologies ! See, too, the 
scores of thousands of their preachers, many of whom, it is true, 
would still remain faithful and effective preachers of righteous- 
ness, but the occupation of more of whom would be gone when 
the theologies were gone ! See, too, the many great schools 
which represent and serve the theologies ; and the Bible, Mis 
sionary, and other great societies, which also represent and sus- 
tain them ! Then, too, our literature is deeply imbued with 
their spirit. Kay, they are incorporated in it. All their doc- 
trines, even the wildest and worst, are embalmed in it and sanc- 
tified by it. Moreover, as men are the subjects of hopes and 
fears more than of all other affections, their theologies, which 
are the great fountains of their hopes and fears, must necessari- 
ly, more than all other influences, possess and sway them. To 
let go of the theologies is, in their apprehension, to fail of the 
heaven they hope for, and to fall into the hell they fear. And, 
then, to give up the theological religion, with all its poetry and 
pictures, its touching stories and frequent eloquence — to give it 
up for a matter-of-fact religion — to give up a religion so juicy 
and so decorated, in exchange for the dry, flowerless, leafless 
religion of reason- -oh I the mere thought of it is unbearable! 

I must not fail to add that the upholding of the theologies is 
regarded as an indispensable public policy. The terrors which 
they inspire are largely relied on to maintain society, and to 
maintain the State. The reliance is by no means misplaced. 

" The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip 
To haud the wretch in order." 



124 APPENDIX. 

And yet how poor tlie society, composed of the superstitions- 
bound and fear-shriveled, compared with the society which 
will be, when reason shall have driven out superstition, and the 
courage which accompanies reason shall have taken the place 
of the present cowardice ! And of how low and mean a type 
is the State, whose subjects are too far unmanned by theologi- 
cal horrors to be able to face either priest or politician, com- 
pared with what the State will be when its subjects, enlightened 
by science and swayed by reason, shall be self-poised and self- 
governing ! 

In view of all this, and of much more to the same end, the 
overthrow of the theologies seems to be not only difficult and 
distant, but well-nigh impossible. Kevertheless, as they are, in 
the main, fanciful and false, we are sure that they can not stand 
forever. Kay, we may hope that, should the very rapid prog- 
ress of the last three or four generations in science and general 
Intel liii en ce continue three or four generations longer, the power 
of the theologies will be broken throughout our country, and, 
may be, throughout the world. But, be the day of deliverance 
from this burden of burdens, and this curse of curses, sooner or 
later, it will be then, and not till then, that Humanity will have 
fully entered upon a new life — a life of science instead of super- 
stition, of fact instead of fancy, of wisdom instead of folly, of 
happiness instead of misery. One, and only one, religion will 
then be seen to have survived the wreck of the theological reli- 
gions — of those religions in which so much that is false and 
evil blends with so much that is true and good ; so much that 
is fanciful, grotesque, fanatical, horrible, with so much that is 
beautiful and sublime. This surviving religion is the manly 
and matter-of-fact religion of reason. It is the religion taught 
by Jesus. It is the religion which, he and his preeminent apos- 
tle .taught, has but one rule, and this rule so simple that 
all can- understand it, and so obviously true that all are con- 
vinced of the truth of it. Do AS YOU would be done by 
is this rule. 

" Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is the law and 

THE PROPHETS." — Jesus. 

" For ALL the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this : 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." — Paul, 



NATURE THE BASIS OF A TRUE THEOLOGT. 

BY GERRIT SMITH. 

The scientific study of nature, in her earth, sea, and sky, 
should be our chief mental employment ; for then should we 
be kept in the sphere of facts and certainties, and from con- 
founding fancies with facts and fictions with certainties. Thus 
kept, we should increase rapidly in the knowledge of God and 
man. The human family is still very low and very unhappy. 
But very high and very happy would it have been had progress 
in natural science been, in all ages, its leading aim. Even now, 
and this too in the most favored lands, such is the aim of but 
here and there an individual. The masses nowhere tax them- 
selves with study. Hence their ignorance, and their liability to 
listen to the shallow and crafty more than to the wise and upright. 
Especially little do they study natural science — that science, 
which, more than all other knowledge, protects and redeems 
from superstition and from the designs and delusions of the 
priesthood. I say delusions as well as designs ; for, designing 
as is a large part of the priesthood, a larger part is deluded. 

How heaven-high above its present condition and character 
would humanity have been if, when Jesus began his ministry 
of light and love, there had been the present progress in astron- 
omy and geology for that ministry to blend with ! In unavoid- 
able adaptation to their petty and fanciful universe, the early 
Christians adopted, and, in part, constructed, a petty and fanci- 
ful theology. The whole of their universe was the earth, with 
a not very large ball of fire, revolving around it, to light and 
warm it by day, and with candles, stuck here and there in the 
sky .•*/) serve it at night. And what to them was the earth ? A 
fixed plane, perhaps hardly exceeding Kussia either in extent of 



126 APPENDIX. 

territory or population. And what, then, to them, must have 
been the God who was charged with no wider care than all this 
amounts to? Surely it is no wonder that He should have 
been, in their esteem, but little more than the Big Man that the 
Jews believed Him to be. Consistently, indeed, might they hold 
that He, like other men, was the subject of change, of burning re- 
venge, and relenting sorrow ; that He was capable of hating His 
own offspring — ay, and, as in the case of Esau, of hating them 
even before they were born. 'No effort did it require to believe 
that such a God had built a hell — even an eternal hell — for the 
mass of His children. Nothing was easier than for one race 
to believe, as did the Jews, that this poor, puny, passionate, 
prejudiced God hated the other races in His narrow dominions, 
and gave them all up to be despised, and some of them to be 
destroyed, by the favorite race. In a word, nothing was easier 
than for a bigoted and bloody people to claim the afiinity and 
countenance of such a God and assure itself of His authority 
for the commission of its greatest crimes. 

How different from this infinitesimal part of nature, which the 
early Christians took to be the whole of nature, are the wonders 
which astronomy has opened upon our vision ! To say that 
one no more resembles the other thau does a mole-hill a moun- 
tain, is to illustrate their difference very faintly. The earth, 
instead of being well-nigh the all of nature, proves to be but 
a very small part of the solar system, and scarce a speck in the 
universe. Even as yet astronomers know very little of that 
limitless universe. Nevertheless they know of stars whose 
light has to travel thousands of years before it reaches the earth. 
Well may Hawthorne say : " If the world were crumbled to the 
finest dust and scattered through the universe, there would not 
be an atom of the dust for each star." 

But the difference between nature, as seen in the first cen- 
tury and as seen in the nineteenth, is no greater than the differ- 
ence between a theology, constructed to harmonize with what 
is now known of nature, and, therefore, of the God of nature, 
and the theology current before Ptolemy's theory of the heavens 
and earth, or rather before the theory of Copernicus, since Ptol- 
emy's was not important enough to modify a theology. And 
yet, alas ! Christians still cling to the Christian theology of the 



APPENDIX. 127 

first centuries — a theology made up under the influence of that 
diminutive view of the Supreme Being which reduced Him to 
a godling whose sway was hardly wider than is that of the Em- 
peror of Russia. Yery sad is it, that a theological system should 
ever be built in an age of darkness respeeting nature, and of con- 
sequent ignorance respecting her Author. Bnt sadder still is 
it that, when an age of light has come, such a system of false- 
hood should be allowed to nsurp the place of ascertained truth, 
and that such a creature of the benighted past should be forced 
upon the enlightened present. 

What a deplorable and disgusting spectacle does the disin. 
gennous Christian Church present ! She claims to be, by force 
of her infallible traditions, her infallible Bible and its infallible 
interpretations, the infallible teacher of mankind. And yet she 
is busy in shutting out from her dark inclosnres the constantly 
and every-where breaking light of natural science. Or, when 
she can not do this, she stoutly denies the existence of this light. 
Or, when she can do neither, but is compelled to let in and con- 
fess this light, she impudently claims that she always enjoyed 
it ; that they, who wrote the Bible, or the Spirit that prompted 
them, enjoyed it ; and that, even in her earliest days and when 
all else was in darkness, she was illumined with all the knowl- 
edge necessary to guide her in constructing a perfect system of 
theology — a system perfect for all ages. As an instance of this 
shutting out and of this denying the light, the Church prates 
much as she did a thousand years ago, about the universality 
of the deluge and about man's being a recent creation. In all 
this, she, of course, ignores the counter testimony of monuments 
and ruins and geology. Even the orthodox Hugh Miller's ar- 
guments against that universality have but little weight with 
persons who suffer a line here and a line there in the Bible to 
outweigh the certain and conclusive proofs of natural science. 
At the late anniversary, in Nottingham, of the British Scientific 
Association, it was found that every member of it, except Pro- 
fessor Owen, held Darwin's evolution hypothesis instead of 
the Bible or special-creation hypothesis. But Darwin, al- 
though fortified by such names as Spencer and Lyell, and 
by all the discovered proofs in the crust of the earth of the 
remote antiquity of the human race, avails nothing with the 



128 APPENDIX. 

creed-bound against tlie words of a book, written no one knows 
wben, nor by whom ; and which, by the way, is no more one 
book than a dozen pamphlets, written in a dozen dijBferent cen- 
turies, would become one book by being stitched together. As 
an instance of the other disingenuousness to which I have 
referred — her twisting of the Scriptures and of herself into an 
agreement with science when its teachings can no longer be re- 
sisted — the Church, in order to meet the facts and demonstra- 
tions of geology, now holds that the six days in which God cre- 
ated the world are no longer to be taken as literal days, but 
each one as an infinitely long period of time ! — and that the 
Bible representation of" the sun and moon's standing still, or of 
the earth's being a fixed plane and all the heavens revolving 
around it, is to be taken no longer as the statement of a fact, 
but only of an appearance ! 

How much longer must this theological trash be allowed to 
abuse our patience ! How much longer must the darkness 
and the myths of the past be allowed to shut out the light and 
facts of the present ! How much longer must men and women 
be required to get into children's clothes ! These theologies, 
well enough suited to the days when they were invented, are 
as little suited to our day as is the infant's swaddling to bodily 
maturity. Even the great central myth of the Christian the- 
ology — that God sent His " only -begotten Son" on an errand to 
this world — was, after all, not so preposterous an invention as 
many take it to be. For the petty God, of whom this is af- 
firmed, was believed, at the time of this invention, to have no 
other world to see to than a small part of the earth, on which 
was only a small part of the population of the whole earth. 
But how great the folly of adhering to this story after astrono- 
mers have proved that there are numberless worlds ; and that 
God would, therefore, have needed not an " only -begotten Son," 
but numberless sons, in order that each of these worlds might 
have its visitor — ay, and have him for thirty or forty years ! 
The story in qu-estion does very well in connection with a petty 
God and his petty province ; but how silly and sickening it is 
when associated with the true God and His boundless universe I 
It is due, however, to the priesthood to add that it will no more 
suffer itself, in this case than in others, to be cornered by the 



APPENDIX. 129 

astronomers. Its ingenuity opens two doors of escape. First, 
this is the only world in which there is sin, and, therefore, the 
only one which the " only-begotten Son" had need to visit. 
Second, it calls Jesus God, and can therefore admit, for the 
sake of the argument, that every one of the worlds is so sinful 
as to require a visit from him. For, if he is God, he could 
visit them all — ay, and simultaneously. 

Oh ! when will the theologies — these immeasurably greatest 
obstacles in all ages and nations to human progress — come to 
an end ! When will the Christian theology, which, by force 
of its few foolish and wicked words about witches and witch- 
craft, is responsible for the murder of many thousands ; which, 
by force of its cruel and causeless curse upon Canaan, made 
Africa the prey of Christendom, and enslaved scores of millions 
of her children ; which, through its mean falsehoods about 
deeply wronged woman, was able to put her and to keep her 
under the foot of man ; and which, by its terrors, as groundless 
as great, robs of peace and hope scores of millions of every 
generation — when, I ask, will even the Christian theology come 
to an end ? Sooner, probably, than the other theologies, be- 
cause more light is pouring into its darkness than into theirs. 
And, yet, it will not be very soon. Men know that they should 
be religious, and, therefore, they desire to be religious. But, 
for a long time, the priests will be able to uphold the popular 
belief that the Christian theology (though in fact the greatest 
hinderance to religion) is, with all its miracles and monstrosities, 
identical with religion. Hence, men are afraid to throw off this 
theology. Afraid are they to hear others say, or even to whisper 
it to their more than half-convinced selves, that this theology, 
as a whole, has no known foundation in truth. Men have not 
yet learned to believe with the beloved Jesus — that best of all 
men and wisest of all moral teachers — that religion consists 
simply in doing as we would be done by ; or with Paul, that 
it consists solely in loving ou.r neighbor as ourself. 

When we see how numerous and mighty are the interests in 
which the Christian theology is intrenched, we may well de- 
spair of seeing it soon give place to a theology which shall be 
adjusted to what science teaches of nature. Were the theology 
of Christendom thus adjusted, down would go her theological 



130 APPENDIX. 

seminaries ; and, with very few exceptions, down would go 
her cliurclies and priests. Dowm, too, would go lier Bible so- 
cieties, lier tract and missionary societies, and, in short, all her 
institutions which are based on the recognition of the infalli- 
bility of the Bible. In respect to its principles, precepts, and 
inspirations, the Bible does, indeed, stand far ahead of all 
other books. Nevertheless, how can a man, whose eyes have 
been providentially turned to its absurdities and abominations, 
continue with a good conscience to help circulate it as an infal- 
lible authority? How can he longer call on men to believe, 
and to believe too for the life of their souls, in the nonsense 
about Jonah and the whale ; the dry path through the Red 
Sea ; and the reanimation of dead bodies ! More than this, 
how can he longer call upon them to believe in the fitness of 
charging the Great Loving Father with putting lying spirits 
in His children ; with putting all Saul's wives into David's 
bosom ; with commanding the cruelest wars, and dooming the 
conquered men, women, and children to extermination ; and 
with other such things, as only the worst of devils should be 
charged with ! 

I notice that orthodox preachers and writers are, of late, re- 
peating with unusual frequency that the Bible is the " Word 
of God." Whether they do this to shut out from themselves, 
or from others, or from both, the fast-thickening doubts of the 
propriety of naming a book, in which there is so much non- 
sense and so much wickedness, the " Word of God," so it is 
that it forcibly recalls that similar expedient to save a sinking 
idolatry, when " all with one voice about the space of two hours 
cried out, ' Great is Diana of the Ephesians !' " But by no such 
nor by any other jugglery — no, nor by any means whatever — can 
the Bible be saved. The wise and truthful parts of it will save 
themselves. The remainder will perish. Science, in its prog- 
ress, is winnowing the Bible as well as every thing else. This 
progress will continue until truth shall have completed her ex- 
pulsion of falsehood, and until there shall not be left one shred 
of superstition with which to patch up a tattered theology. I 
do not forget the wide-spread fear that the casting away of the 
whole Bible will be one of the results of this progress. Per- 
haps there is some reason for the fear. But the responsibil- 



APPENDIX. 181 

ity for this calamity would not rest upon science. It would 
rest on those foolish priests and churches, who, by endeavoring 
to shut out from the Bible the searching light of science, raise 
an issue between the Bible and science, and, as far as in them 
lies, necessitate the alternative of accepting the whole Bible 
with all its folly and sin, or of rejecting it with all the priceless 
good there is in it. If the position, " The whole Bible or none 
of it," shall result in " none of it," then they, and they only, who 
take this bigoted and base position against discriminating sci- 
ence will be chargeable with having robbed the world of the 
wisest words, which have come down to it from the past. 

A miserable world this has ever been because the theologies 
have ever kept religion under. A happy world will it be when 
a science-enlightened religion shall get these theologies under. 
The triumph is sure. The one true religion — the religion of 
nature and reason, the religion which Jesus loved and lived — 
will yet get these soul-shriveling and man-crushing theologies 
under her feet and out of the world. 



I have written these sheets with a deep and undoubting con- 
viction that they contain but truth. I, however, foresee that the 
defender of the Christian theology will be as quick to say of 
these sheets, as of all I have written on this subject for ten 
years, that they contain little but falsehood. And yet, iny 
brother, why should you persist in defending this theology ? 
You are conscious that much of it is at war with your experi- 
ence and observation, and with what you know of nature. 
But you will say that it comes from the Bible. I admit that 
part of it does. What proof, however, have you — such proof, 
I mean, as can abide the laws of evidence — that the Bible is 
infallible? Not a particle. Your most relied-on reason for 
saying that this theology is true, is that Jesus says it is. Where 
does he say so ? In the Bible, is your answer. It is not ad- 
mitted that the Bible says that Jesus recognizes the truth of 
this theology. But even if it does say so, where is the proof 
that it is authorized to say so ? Nowhere. Again, even if he 



132 APPENDIX. 

did recognize it to be truth, wliere is tlie proof that ne Knew it 
to be truth ? Did he know all things? Even the Bible says 
that he confessed he did not. Oh ! cite not Jesus for your the- 
ology ! He who taught his disciples to build their "house 
upon a rock," would be the last man to have them rest in these 
groundless theological assumptions. 

Alas that enlightened men, and men too who are good as 
well as enlightened, should still continue to accept and circu- 
late these absurd theologies ! Sadder than all is it, that they 
should recognize as religion what is so largely and glaringly a 
compound of superstition, fraud, cruelty, and curses — and as 
that religion of reason, justice, and love, which Jesus taught 
in the years of his ministry, and which nature ever teaches. 



